And SIB's Director General, Diana Castillo, delved further into the disconnect between the statistics being reported and the perception on the ground. She explained that many of the people being surveyed were outside the workforce - some were retired, still in school, or stay at home parents.
But we also asked her about the government utilizing these figures to project a false reality. Often they will boast about the low rate without explaining that it is due to a change in classification. Castillo explained that the information is made public to anyone who wants to take a closer look.
Diana Castillo, Director General, SIB
"You have persons who are outside of the labor force, so about 45% of the working age population is not at all in the labor force and so this is where I think people are seeing that there are persons that are not working, they are not engaged in productive activity and that is where the disconnect between the unemployment rate which is those persons who are not working but they're looking for work vs persons who are not engaged in productive activity but they're not looking, they're not available, etc. so we have provided some more in-depth analysis on what persons who are not in the labor force are engaged in. About 1/3 of them are of retirement age, about another 1/3 of them are young people, probably still in school, 14 and up. You have about I believe it is about 8,000 who we classify as the potential labor force. Now most of these are persons who might want to work but they're just not looking and so we have highlighted that portion of the persons who are not in the labour force but the vast majority are just not available, perhaps they fall outside the normal working age where they might be still in school or they might be retired. We have persons who are not working or looking for work because they're ill or disabled so there's a range of different reasons that we highlighted there. Among women, of course the main reason why they are not active in the labor force is that about 1/3 of them would report that they are engaged in domestic responsibility, family responsibilities, caring for persons in the home and so they're just not available to work."
"The data that we produce is put out there for all our users to use how they see best. We encourage our data users of all types, not just government, but other types of data users, the media, the public, the businesses to try and take a closer look at the data, to get in contact with us, if we can clarify more and contribute to their understanding of the data so they're able to use it in a meaningful way. Yes I understand that there is a disconnect between what is perceived as persons who are unemployed and what the definition is, the SIB utilizes strict definitions as person international standards for computing labor statistics and so these are what the definitions are."
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