Most people involved in business were relieved when it was announced that the Central Statistical Office (the CSO) was again operating up to scratch, after several years of being shut down because of lack of accommodation.

As in the case of the DPP's office, accommodation had been available, but was not considered suitable.

But the public was now able to get accurate statistics about employment issues from the CSO once more.

This included such essential data as the number of people employed in significant economic categories in TT. Given the change in employment areas post-covid, understanding what these changes are is important, because it determines what market industries should aim at and what training young people wanting to enter commerce should search out.

Perhaps the CSO’s greatest accomplishment has been the publication of data for the third quarter of 2022, entitled Table 2: Labour Force by Employment Status, Occupational Group and Sex.

It lists the following table of occupations: legislators, senior officials and managers; professionals; technicians and associate professionals; clerks; service workers (including the defense force) and shop sales workers; forestry and fishery workers; craft and related workers; plant and machine operators and assemblers; elementary occupations; and not stated.

Of these, in the category of legislators, senior officials and managers, the total number is 65,000, with 64,700 currently employed, leaving only 400 unemployed. That makes it the closest category to full employment of any category recorded, other than plant and machine operators and assemblers.

The next category listed is professionals: total labour force 33,800, of whom the CSO lists 32,400 as employed.

Next listed: technicians and associate professionals has a total labour force of 83,000 and 81,500 employed.

Only 64,800 are listed in the next category – clerks – and 59,700 are employed.

Service workers, who include Defence Force and shop sales workers (although it escapes me what logical connection shop sales workers have with Defence Force workers, who surely have very different areas of responsibility) number 93,400, of whom 86,100 are employed, but only 7,000 fall under the category of those without work and looking for jobs.

Since these figures are not disaggregated, there is no way of discerning how many of these are government-employed and how many private-sector employed.

This is important when we are trying to understand the number of people who were paid their normal salaries by government during the covid lockdown. This data would be useful in order to be able to estimate the actual cost of government public servants.

This may be important, as is the case with other categories which quietly blended government and non-government categories, such as clerks, professionals, technicians and associate professionals.

[caption id="attachment_1008437" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Forestry workers at a site where trees were cut down at forest reserve of the Aripo Savannah in Septe