Importing foreign labour becoming a greater possibility for Jamaica.

With the report of a 4.5 unemployment rate under its belt, the Government of Jamaica is strongly considering opening up the local job market to "skilled foreign labour". In fact PM Holness has conceded that Jamaica may eventually have to bring in skilled labour to fill the shortages businesses say they are experiencing. 

Representative of the PSOJ and CEO of the SEPROD Group Richard Pandohie lamented that there is a shortage of skilled labour across several disciplines and that a plan must be put in place so that it doesn't slow the recovery the Jamaican economy is currently experiencing post COVID.

Mr Pandohie:

At the lowest end, you tend to have labour availability, but as you go up the value chain, whether you are talking about people in the garment industry, when you talking about people in the construction industry looking for plumbers and electricians, and talking about people in the manufacturing industry like engineers and quality control people, there is a shortage in Jamaica and the situation is continuing to get worse.

His fellow business leader, Mr Andrew Mahfood, CEO of the Wisynco Group chimed in:

With 4.5 per cent unemployment, we can say we are at full employment as a country, and the demand for talent and the demand for labour continues. I think one of the things we need to look on as a country, as businesses expand in all areas, in tourism, manufacturing, retail, etc, we need more talent to work in these industries, and if it is not available locally, I think one of the things we need to do as a country is to look within the region and outside the region to see how we can properly have talent to drive and continue the growth of businesses, otherwise you will see businesses starting to stall," Mahfood warned as he outlined that Wisynco itself is "now looking all over the place for engineers and skilled machine operators for our expansion.

He also revealed that Seprod was losing its workers to positions overseas as former employees choose to migrate to find greener pastures abroad.

Mr. Pandohie agreeing with Mahfood that migrating workers has placed a considerable dent in the available skilled, local working force noted:

The bottomline is that there is a problem, [and] it's not getting better, we [are] not turning out people fast enough, and the people we are turning out they are definitely leaving the country for a number of reasons. I mean, wage rates in North America have gone up substantially. Look at Amazon drivers, they are starting at US$150,000 a year now. Because of that, in Jamaica now, we can't find truck drivers. They are starting in the US at over US$100,000 a year now. So people's lives are being substantially changed when they leave because of the quantum change in salaries and wages in North America, so I think the reality is that we are going to continue to have migration, but we shouldn't fight migration, we should accept that. What we need to do is have an inflow to balance the outflow, and we therefore need to have a policy, and a number of private sector leaders have been saying it, we need to have an immigration policy that will allow us to bring in the requisite skill sets to balance what we don't have available to ensure that our own progress and our own development is not hindered.

In response to these concerns, this is what PM Holness said:

"We may very well have to consider a programme of controlled and increased entry of workers from overseas, to supplement our labour force."

We'll be following this story closely and report as more details develop.

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