by Linda Straker
The latest data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has indicated that as of June 2016 Grenada’s population expanded by 814 persons, bringing the population count to 110,910 which in 2015 stood at 110,096.
The 0.7% increase to the 2015 figures consisted of 55,955 males or 50.5% and 54,955 females or 49.5%. The data, which is part of the annexe documents to the 2018 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, said that at present 67.3% of the population is in the age group 15 to 64.
“The section of the population ages 0-14 years (24,201) persons and 65 tears and above (12,023) were 21.8% and 10.8% respectively,” said the report which explained that Grenada’s dependency ratio stood at 48.5%.
The legal age for employment in Grenada is 16 and, according to the preliminary result of the 2017 Labour Force Survey the labour force in Grenada decrease by 3.0%. It moved from 56,998 persons in 2016 to 55,268 in 2017. Of that amount, the CSO said that 42,011 were employed and 13,257 were unemployed.
The labour force survey conducted in September 2017, was undertaken by the Central Statistical Office of the Ministry of Finance and Energy, in collaboration with the OECS Commission, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Decent Work Team, the World Bank and the Office for the Caribbean and the United Nations Development Programme.
A Labour Force Survey is a household sample survey that provides estimates of employment and unemployment. These are among the most important measures of economic performance of any economy.
The main objectives of the 2017 Labour Force Survey which collected data from 1,365 households were:
- to divide the working-age population into three mutually exclusive classifications – employed, unemployed, and not in the labour force;
- to provide descriptive and explanatory data on each of these classifications; and
- to assess the level of poverty in Grenada using the multi-dimensional approach to poverty measurement.
The annexe report to the budget statement said that the high employment rate reflects low educational attainment among school leavers, most of whom had only primary, partial secondary or full secondary school. Based on the 2017 findings, youth unemployment rate was 39.2% of those actively seeking employment.
