Summary. Between 2021 and 2025, the expansionary economic policies coupled with the strategic public investments in the infrastructure and social services sectors (health, education and housing) undertaken by the PPP/C Government have led to the creation of an estimated

≥70,000 sustainable jobs in the economy. This outturn has exceeded their initial target of 50,000 jobs according to the party’s manifesto in 2020. Notably, the estimated employment trends and figures for 2020–2025 exclude the manufacturing, services sub-sectors and other non-oil sectors. These estimates are relatively conservative, as they also do not account for all of the expatriates and part-time jobs.

• The foregoing estimate is corroborated by the estimated 67,905 new employees registered between the ages of 16-59 with the National Insurance Scheme (NIS). The foregoing estimate is corroborated by the estimated 67,905 new employees registered between the ages of 16-59 with the National Insurance Scheme (NIS).
• The overall employment estimate may naturally include some amount of expatriates, which can be derived by subtracting the total estimate of 72, 293 from the NIS estimate of 67, 903 = 4,390 expatriate workers.
• The agriculture, forestry and fishing industries; mining and quarrying; manufacturing; construction; wholesale and retail trade; transportation and storage, and accommodation and food services sectors combined accounted for 83% of total employment in 2021 or 239,904 persons. These sectors together recorded a 49.8% growth between 2020 and 2024, with the construction sector accounting for the highest at 180%, followed by the accommodation and food services at 153%, the wholesale and retail sectors at 83%, transport and storage at 81%, manufacturing at 57%, mining and quarrying excluding the petroleum sector at 15%, and the agriculture, fishing and forestry sector at 20%.
  
• With the aforementioned in mind, approximately 75,572 persons benefited from job creation and capacity building activities undertaken by the GoG in the agriculture sector.
• Another 7,300 jobs were created in the tourism and hospitality sector on account of the targeted policies aimed at stimulating and incentivizing investments and job creation in this sector. Also, these are persons who would have benefited from a number of programmes and capacity building activities sponsored by the GoG.
• Given the exponential growth in the construction sector as previously alluded to, of 180% between 2020 and 2024, this growth would have been driven by the housing sector, targeting the distribution of 50,000 house lots, the expansion of existing housing schemes, developing new housing schemes to facilitate the construction of new homes, private sector development and public investment in roads, bridges, health, education and sports infrastructure across the country, thereby enabling the creation of conservatively over 30,000 jobs assuming that each project (>6,300 contracts administered through public tendering) generated an average of five (5) new jobs.
• By extrapolating from banking sector data, residential mortgages increased by 70%, rising from $90 billion in 2020 to $153 billion in 2024. This growth can be approximated to the construction of 5,000 low-income homes during this period. This, in turn, translates to an average of 1000 housing units constructed per annum. Assume that the construction of each housing unit generated employment for at least 5 persons per unit, thus, equating to an estimated total workforce of 25,000 persons in the housing construction sub-sector.
  

Introduction

In a review of its performance over the last five years (2020-2025), the Government of Guyana (GoG) reported that it has delivered on its manifesto performance by surpassing their initial target of creating 50,000 jobs. Government critics, however, mainly a group of overseas based Guyanese—some of whom are in academia—sought to dispute the government’s figure. In an article published in mainstream media on June 8, 2025, titled: “We cannot account for PPP/C claims of employment increases of 50,000 or 60,000 new jobs over 2020-2024 period”, the authors’ claim to have performed some sort of “analysis”, suggesting that the new jobs created between that period may have increased by 20,200. Hereunder is an excerpt from their “analysis”:

“We extracted employment figures for 2020 and 2021 also from the Guyana labour force survey by the Bureau of Statistics (November 2021). The Bureau’s figures of 251,000 in 2020 and 264,900 in 2021 match reasonably well our estimates of 265,600 in 2020 and 268,800 in 2021. In contrast, the Private Sector Commission’s (PSC) estimate of 47% employment of the labour force in December 2023 (= 149,000) differs greatly from (is only about half of) the ILO-based estimate. From our table above, employment may have increased 2020-2024 by 285,700 – 265,500 = 20,200 over these five years. From Press reports, we can account for extra employment from three government schemes since 2020: 15,283 in the part-time Pathways project, G$40,000 per month; 2,700 Amerindian Community Support Officers (CSOs); and 6,484 in the ENGAGE project; a total of 24,467. None of these three projects offers full-time employment”.

Contrary to the firmly convicted belief of these distinguished academics that the above constitutes an analysis, regrettably it is by far the most mediocre, simplistic analysis emanating from a group of persons who hold doctoral degrees. There are two main limitations that were completely overlooked, which any seasoned researcher would inevitably have to contend with when performing such an analysis:

1. owing to the absence of an updated and credible labour market study;
2. the nuances of the Bank of Guyana (BoG) and World Bank (WB) estimates, which the authors relied on, are of such that the underlying assumptions therefrom are most likely outdated, thus, useless for this purpose. In other words, the estimates do not account for the current multifaceted and multidimensional developments in the market landscape.

Methodology. This article seeks to address the foregoing limitations in performing an updated analytical review of the current labour market landscape, using the 2021 third quarter (Q3) Guyana Labour Force Survey (GLFS)1 report by the Bureau of Statistics (BoS) as the baseline data. A variance analysis between the GLFS and BoG labour force and population estimates was performed herein, to corroborate the assertion proffered at limitation number (ii) above. Additionally, available data for the key sectors in conjunction with the macroeconomic indicators and other variables were analyzed from which inferences were drawn in estimating employment trends between 2021 and 2025.

1 https://statisticsguyana.gov.gy/surveys/

Discussion and Analysis

Between 2021 and 2025, the expansionary economic policies coupled with the strategic public investments in the infrastructure and social services sectors (health, education and housing) undertaken by the PPP/C Government have led to the creation of an estimated ≥70,000 sustainable jobs in the economy. This outturn has exceeded their initial target of 50,000 jobs according to the party’s manifesto in 2020.

                                                     Table 1: Summary of Job Creation: 2021-2025

Moreover, the foregoing estimate is corroborated by the total average number of new employees registered with the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) for their NIS or social security contributions. Having examined the annual reports published by the NIS for the period 2005-20223 (Annex, Table 6), although the annual reports for the fiscal years 2023-2024 have not yet been published, the historical trend for this period was analyzed.

2 https://oilnow.gy/featured/its-not-just-about-the-revenues-its-what-we-can-do-with-the-investment- dollars-exxon-vp-on-guyana-operations/

3 https://www.nis.org.gy/annual_reports

In so doing, the annual average number of registered employees for the years 2021-2022, which was under the PPP/C administration, was used to estimate the total for the five years period 2021- 2025. This analysis shows that between 2006 and 2014, the annual average number of newly registered employees was 10,981, with the lowest recorded at 8,244 in 2006 and the highest at 12,435 in 2011. From 2015 to 2020, the annual average number of new registered employees was 10,676, with a low of 5,879 in 2020 and a high of 12,637 in 2017. The sharp decline in 2020 can be attributed to the election turmoil, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic downturn resulting from regressive policies, alongside job cuts implemented by the former APNU+AFC government in key sectors. This assertion is further supported by the 22% decline recorded in 2019, amounting to 2,700 fewer registrations, dropping from 12,173 in 2018 to 9,454 in 2019 in the pre-pandemic period.

Exhibit 1: On average, 13,581 new employees registered for NIS contributions between 2021-2022/25, reflecting an increase of 18% or 2,100 more persons registering annually, than in the 2009-2014 period, and an increase of 27% or nearly 3,000 more than in the period 2015-2020.

The overall employment estimate as illustrated in table 1 may naturally include some amount of expatriates, which can be derived by subtracting the total estimate of 72, 293 from the NIS estimate of 67, 903 = 4,390 expatriate workers.

According to the GLFS (2021) report, the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries; mining and quarrying; manufacturing; construction; wholesale and retail trade; transportation and storage, and accommodation and food services sectors combined accounted for 83% of total employment in 2021 or 239,904 persons.

As such, it is worthwhile examining the economic growth of these sectors between 2020 and 2024 in order to estimate the total number employment created in those sectors. Hence, as shown in table 2, these sectors together recorded a 49.8% growth between 2020 and 2024, with the construction sector accounting for the highest at 180%, followed by the accommodation and food services at 153%, the wholesale and retail sectors at 83%, transport and storage at 81%, manufacturing at 57%, mining and quarrying excluding the petroleum sector at 15%, and the agriculture, fishing and forestry sector at 20%.

Selected Job Creation and Capacity Building Activities in the Agriculture Sector: 2020-20244.

With the aforementioned in mind, approximately 75,572 persons benefited from job creation and capacity building activities undertaken by the GoG in the agriculture sector, whereby:

• 461 graduates were equipped with skills to profitably manage their own agri-business;
• 44,160 farmers trained in sustainable agriculture practice;
• 673 farmers certified to produce wholesome food and agricultural commodities for export;
• 761 farmers trained in aquaculture;
• 29,517 licenses processed by the fisheries department.

Selected Job Creation and Capacity Building Activities in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector: 2020-20245.

Approximately 7,300 new jobs were created in the tourism and hospitality sector on account of the targeted policies aimed at stimulating and incentivizing investments and job creation in this sector. Also, these are persons who would have benefited from a number of programmes and capacity building activities, whereby:

4 Cited from National Budget Estimates Performance Indicators

5 Cited from National Budget Estimates Performance Indicators

• 5,098 persons trained in areas of tourism since 2020 to 2023, which increased from 786 persons 2,250 persons,
• 13,345 persons employed in the tourism sub-sector at the end of 2023, up from 6,048 in 2020, reflecting an increase of 121% or 7,297 new employment created,
• 359 tourism businesses licensed between 2020 and 2023 with another 250 targeted for 2024, bringing the total to 609 by the end of 2024,
• 11 new tourism projects developed since 2020, with another 4 targeted in 2024, bringing the total to 15 new projects developed by the end of 2024, and
• 46 new tourism products developed since 2020, with another 14 targeted in 2024, bringing the total to 60 new tourism products by the end of 2024.

Explanation of other underlying Assumptions

• Given the exponential growth in the construction sector as previously alluded to, of 180% between 2020 and 2024, this growth would have been driven by the housing sector, targeting the distribution of 50,000 house lots, the expansion of existing housing schemes, developing new housing schemes to facilitate the construction of new homes, private sector development and public investment in roads, bridges, health, education and sports infrastructure across the country, thereby enabling the creation of conservatively over 30,000 jobs assuming that each project (>6,300 contracts administered through public tendering) generated an average of five (5) new jobs.
• By extrapolating from banking sector data, residential mortgages increased by 70%, rising from $90 billion in 2020 to $153 billion in 2024. This growth can be approximated to the construction of 5,000 low-income homes during this period. This translates to an average of 1000 housing units constructed per annum. Assume that the construction of each housing unit generated employment for at least 5 persons per unit, thus, equating to an estimated total workforce of 25,000 persons in the housing construction sub-sector.

Notably, the estimated employment trends and figures for 2020–2025 exclude the manufacturing, services sub-sectors and other non-oil sectors. These estimates are relatively conservative, as they also do not account for all of the expatriates and part-time jobs.

Review of Key Findings in the GLFS Report (2021)

According to the GLFS (2021: Q3), unemployment was 14.5%. The main findings therein were:

• The population aged 15 and above stood at 582,600 or 72.3% of the total population.
• The labour force participation rate was recorded at 49.6% or 288,000 (representing 96,000 households or 39% of total estimated households).
• The employment to population ratio was recorded at 42.4%.

                                 Exhibit 2: Employment by Institutional Sector

Employment by the institutional sector as illustrated in the chart above were:

• Private sector accounted for 61% (175,680 persons or 58,560 households or 24% of the total estimated households).
• Public sector accounted for 23% (66,240 persons or 22,000 households or 9% of the total estimated households).
• Non-for-profit organizations accounted for 16% (46,000 persons or 15,360 households or 6% of the total estimated households).

A comparison of the labour force estimates by the BoG and GLFS shows that there was a 26,052 variance or 9% in 2021. Of note, the GLFS methodology differs from the methodologies employed by the BoG and WB for their estimates.

Exhibit 3: The labour force participation rate fell from 56% in 2017 (Q3) to 50% in 2021 (Q3), accounting for total job losses over that period of an estimated 19,440.

Conclusion

This analysis presents a comprehensive data-driven rebuttal to critiques surrounding the Government of Guyana’s reported employment gains for the 2020–2025 period. By employing a methodological approach—anchored in the 2021 Q3 Guyana Labour Force Survey, and sector- specific indicators—it demonstrates that the government’s estimated creation of over 50,000 sustainable jobs is both plausible and conservative. Moreover, the exclusion of employment contributions from the manufacturing and services sub-sectors, along with unaccounted expatriate labor, suggests that actual employment figures may be even higher. In sum, this review highlights the essential role of reliable data and methodical analysis in accurately assessing employment dynamics at the national level. It also reinforces how targeted public investment has been pivotal in stimulating both economic development and job creation across key sectors.

ANNEXES

Table 3: Transportation Sector: Annual Registration, Motor Vehicles: 2015-2023

                                 Table 4: Employment by Economic Sector

                   Table 5: Variance Analysis of Labour Force Estimates: BoG vs. GLFS

Table 6: NIS Database: Number of Employees (Ages 16-59), Registered Annually