Hurricane Melissa slammed into western Jamaica on October 28, 2025 as a catastrophic Category 5 system. St Elizabeth, Manchester, St James and Westmoreland endured the full fury of a hurricane unlike anything Jamaica has seen in decades. It left the island’s primary food basket in ruins. The landscape was unrecognisable. Trees appeared scorched from wind burn, thousands of houses were damaged and hundreds were torn from their foundations, major roadways turned into rivers, and several communities were completely cut off from the rest of the island. Prolonged power outages plunged thousands into darkness, and the confirmed death toll of 45 has now made Melissa one of the deadliest hurricane strikes in Jamaica, on par with Gilbert in 1988. The impact of the system triggered one of the largest recovery and reconstruction packages in Jamaica’s history, amounting to US$6.7 billion from five major international partners. Melissa is a sobering reminder that as climate change accelerates, Caribbean countries will face storms of increasing intensity, scale and frequency.

The immediate priority has been humanitarian relief — providing support to displaced families, clearing blocked roads, restoring utilities and mobilising international assistance — as it should. Yet, beyond these urgent efforts, lies a critical question: What will the long-term economic consequences of Hurricane Melissa be? To glean an appropriate insight, Jamaica must turn its attention back 37 years to Hurricane Gilbert, the event that altered Jamaica’s economic trajectory more profoundly than any other natural disaster. When Gilbert roared across the Caribbean in September 1988, it was the most powerful tropical system ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere at the time. Jamaica was struck by Gilbert as an intense Category 3 cyclone on September 12. Today, it remains the only hurricane whose eye passed directly over the entire island traversing from east to west. While the physical devastation was immense and the stories lived on with the elders, the most enduring damage was not visible to the naked eye. It was economic, structural and multi-generational.

In a timely and rigorous peer-reviewed journal article, published in Economic Modelling, titled “The Workforce Paradox: Do Extreme Natural Disasters Accelerate or Undermine Labour Productivity?”,written by myself, Dr Nadine McCloud (senior lecturer, Department of Economics, UWI) and Ajornie Taylor (PhD candidate, University of Calgary), we document that Hurricane Gilbert inflicted a profound long-term drag on Jamaica’s labour productivity (output per worker). Using the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct the first and only estimate of what Jamaica’s productivity trajectory would have been had Gilbert never occurred. The results hypothesise that Melissa’s true cost, much like Gilbert’s, may not be measured in months or even years, but across decades if the post-Melissa reconstruction strategy is not grounded in a long-term vision.

The findings show that because of Gilbert, Jamaica experienced a temporary short-term productivity boost of 14.6 per cent on average over the first two to four (2-4) years after the hurricane. This short-run improvement was driven largely by the surge in Official Development Assistance and the intensity of reconstruction efforts that followed. Industries within the goods-producing sector experienced relatively swift rebounds. Mining suffered minimal physical damage and recovered quickly once power was restored. Agriculture, despite severe losses, rebounded within three months. Roughly 40 per cent of damaged acreages had been remediated, and about 90 per cent of the replanting targets were achieved. Manufacturing activity also strengthened during this period as reconstruction created new demand for materials and labour.

The construction sector, however, revealed a more complex reality. Although activity surged, productivity declined. This was due to a combination of longer working hours and a rapid influx of new workers into the sector, an expansion that diluted output per worker even as total output increased. The services sector also showed early signs of recovery, though at a slower pace than the goods-producing industries. Tourism, in particular, benefited from a highly orchestrated rebuilding effort and an aggressive advertising campaign, including a US$20-million promotional programme in the United States and the strategic hosting of 6,000 travel agents and journalists.

Despite these short-term gains, the long-run economic consequences of Gilbert were devastating. Our study finds that over more than three decades, the hurricane reduced Jamaica’s labour productivity by an average of 33.7 per cent. By 2021, Jamaica was 72 per cent less productive than it would have been in the absence of Gilbert. This long-term decline pushed the country roughly 20 places lower in the global productivity rankings. A 33.7 per cent productivity loss is not just an economic statistic. It represents slower job creation, weaker competitiveness, reduced national income and fewer opportunities for Jamaicans over an entire generation. Put simply, Hurricane Gilbert permanently weakened the country’s productive capacity. The evidence shows that the decline occurred primarily through the GDP channel, reinforcing the need for reconstruction efforts that strengthen Jamaica’s long-term productive base.

The same risk now looms with Hurricane Melissa, a more catastrophic system that struck the heart of Jamaica’s food basket and densely populated western parishes. With climate change intensifying storms across the region, Melissa is unlikely to be the last hurricane to reshape Jamaica’s economic future.

Finally, when Melissa’s unprecedented strength, the scale of destruction, and the extraordinary financial response are considered together, they make one thing unmistakably clear: Jamaica must rebuild its productive capacity with urgency and care if it is to secure its economic future. Hurricanes of this magnitude not only damage critical infrastructure, but they can also reshape national development trajectories. Melissa’s devastation is undeniable, but so too is Jamaica’s capacity to rise from it. The US$6.7 billion in loans and insurance payments is fit for purpose and provides an immense opportunity for the country to avoid repeating Jamaica’s post-Gilbert productivity performance. If we strengthen our productive base, modernise infrastructure and prepare our workforce for a climate-challenged future, we can transform a national tragedy into a development accelerator. The conditions are ripe for this transformative work to begin now, as the future will depend on how boldly Jamaica chooses to act to avoid repeating the long and painful economic legacy left by Gilbert.

Wendel Ivey is an Economist and Researcher whose work explores productivity, development and climate resilience in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. His work has been published in leading international journals.