And while the PM had zero interest in that kind of public information - in contrast, he would perform a song and dance if there were daily releases about Belize's record unemployment rate of 2.8%. It's the metric that adorns every speech he delivers, the tip of the spear on every sound byte he shares, and if he could have a hologram projecting it in the skies above Belmopan, he probably would.
But for the leader of the Opposition it's a hollow statistic, because it excludes the many thousands who have been deemed to no longer be looking for work:
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"This resolve to continue to discount the 150,000 people that according to the new IMF standards are unemployable is a tragic mistake on our part because those people remain in society. Those people can either be threats to our society and burn to the state purse."
"What needs to happen is the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Human Development, the Ministry of Economic Development -. They need to have some type of liaison office that is working with these people to prepare them, to train them, to re -enter the job market."
"We can't give up on those people for the sake of statistics."
According to the Statistical Institute of Belize, an estimated 41.5 percent or 138,955 of working-age persons were classified as neither employed nor unemployed in April 2023.
This includes discouraged job seekers who reported that they were not actively seeking employment due to the belief that there was no suitable work available, or being tired of looking.
