JAMAICA is celebrating a historic 3.3 per cent unemployment rate, but an economist warns this headline figure masks a crisis of underemployment, a massive informal sector, and a generation of disengaged youth who together threaten the country’s sustainable growth.

While only 49,200 Jamaicans are officially jobless, a broader official measure of labour underutilisation stands at 6.7 per cent. More starkly, economist Wendel Ivey points out that only 45 per cent of the 1.4-million-strong workforce is formally registered, suggesting more than half are working in the shadows without social protection.

For chef D’Angelo, these statistics are his reality. “I work on and off… I am available to work full-time,” he says, his precarious work format embodying the kind of informal, underutilising employment that experts say is holding Jamaica back.

D’Angelo’s experience is a textbook case of the underemployment distorting the headline figure. “We do what we term ‘call-on’ work,” the chef explained, detailing a precarious existence where his income is dictated by event bookings. “If an event is happening, we get three or four days for that week, and in other weeks when there is no work, we try to hustle otherwise.”

He is one of 25,400 Jamaicans officially classified as ‘time-related underemployed’ — working part-time but wanting and available for more hours. This underemployment represents a significant drag on national productivity.

According to Ivey, this “reflects a misalignment between skills and available job opportunities.” He argues that having qualified Jamaicans in roles below their competency “limits productivity and earnings potential”.

For D’Angelo, a skilled chef with seven years of experience, this means his expertise is being leveraged for sporadic gigs, not a stable, productive career.

Compounding the issue is the rampant informality within the labour force.

Ivey’s analysis reveals a startling gap: with only approximately 641,495 pay as you earn (PAYE) taxpayers against an employed labour force of 1.4 million, “only about 45 per cent of workers are formally registered”. This suggests D’Angelo’s “call-on” work likely exists in the informal economy, leaving him without social protection, pension contributions, or job security. This informality, Ivey warns, “reduces tax revenues and constrains productivity growth”, undermining the very foundations of sustainable development.

Beyond those like D’Angelo who are working too little, lies a more profound crisis: the 124,700 young people classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training).

Ivey contextualises this 25 per cent rate as “well above the Latin America and Caribbean average of 18.3 per cent”. He argues that this “indicates a large pool of underutilised human capital”, a generation disengaged at the most crucial period of their working lives.

The nature of the job creation itself is a cause for concern. The largest employment increases were in sectors like ‘wholesale and retail trade’, which now accounts for nearly one-fifth of the employed labour force.

Ivey is blunt in his assessment, stating this industry “does not encourage innovation and [has] limited productivity gains”. This suggests the recovery is funnelling workers into sectors with inherently lower wages and limited career progression, potentially reinforcing the cycle of underemployment and informality.

Ivey directly links these conditions to the “outward migration, leading to a brain drain of high-skilled workers”. When skilled professionals cannot find fulfilling, full-time work that matches their qualifications, the incentive to seek opportunity abroad grows, depriving the local economy of its most talented assets.

The solution, according to the economist, is not simply creating more jobs, but better ones. It requires “greater diversification… especially towards manufacturing and logistics” to move the economy up the value chain.

Furthermore, Ivey argues that addressing the NEET crisis demands “targeted skills development, apprenticeships, and entrepreneurship programmes” to convert disengaged youth into economic assets. This is a necessary shift to “help address Jamaica’s long-standing productivity deficit”.

Ultimately, the story of D’Angelo and the 6.7 per cent underutilised is the story of an incomplete recovery. His resigned acceptance that his earnings merely “meet his needs which are kept to the basics” encapsulates the human cost of these structural flaws.

Until the economy can generate stable, formal, and productive employment that matches the skills and availability of its people, the celebrated 3.3 per cent unemployment rate will remain a surface-level victory, obscuring the deeper vulnerabilities within the Jamaican labour market.