The ILO/US-DOL Caribbean Labour Market Information System (CLMIS) Project:
enhancing labour market information for effective planning and monitoring

 

What is CLMIS?

The Caribbean Labour Market Information System (CLMIS) project is an initiative of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United States Department of Labour (US-DOL) to provide technical assistance and initial funding for building and enhancing the capacity for the production and use of labour market information in countries of the English-speaking Caribbean and Suriname.

Through the successful implementation of the project, countries will be in a better position to generate more reliable, timely and internationally-comparable labour market information (LMI), for use at the national, regional and international levels. It will involve closer collaboration among employers, trade unions, education and training institutions, and policy makers in the production, use and dissemination of labour market information.

The project outputs are further expected to contribute to more effective labour, employment and labour market policies in the Caribbean that are responsive to the new challenges of regional and hemispheric integration and globalization.

Why is it needed?

Globalization is a challenge to the survival of Caribbean economies and development policies have focused on how best to manage the process of their integration into the emerging global economy. As such, the main economic objective of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has been to strengthen regional cohesion and prepare the region for integration into the world community.

Creating the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and with it, the free movement of labour, is a critical aspect of the region's strategy. Through this strategy, the region as a whole seeks to address issues such as:

• The challenge of increasing productivity and competitiveness.
• Monitoring occupational wages and labour costs.
• Shifts in employment.
• Unemployment and underemployment.
• Mobilizing and developing human resources.

All these issues lie at the heart of economic and social policies. Labour market information is essential to analyze the challenges ahead and to design policies and monitor their implementation. The weaknesses of present labour market information systems in the region hamper effective and timely monitoring of the labour market as well as designing appropriate policies.

The CLMIS project is expected to contribute to making more and better labour market information available for policymaking at all levels. It will attempt to unify concepts and definitions and through this, comparable information. It will initiate the generation and better analysis of labour market information.

What is the CLMIS project expected to accomplish?

The CLMIS project will provide direct technical assistance and some funding for research/field work to countries, as a means of making LMI more policy relevant. It will operate at the institutional, national and regional levels.

At the institutional level, the project will provide technical assistance to:

• Establish new or enhance existing labour force and establishment-based surveys.
• Evaluate the potential of the National Insurance Schemes to generate statistics on formal sector employment and develop recommendations on how to achieve this.
• Update existing national classifications of occupations.

At the national level, technical assistance and research will be provided to assist countries to:

• Establish or enhance the institutional structure for LMI to increase sustainability of activities. This includes support in developing and adopting a short term National LMI plan based on:
  - a LMI needs and output assessment and
  - national consensus on a set of National Key Indicators for the Labour Market.
• Prepare for the first Caribbean Meeting on regional LMI standards which aims to ensure regional and international comparability of LMI produced in the region.
• Establish an electronic national labour market information library and data manipulation tools to facilitate the use of LMI by national planners and other users.

At the regional level, the output of the project is expected to directly benefit the process of regional integration, especially in establishing the CSME, as it will:

• Establish the conditions to create an up-to-date regional LMI database.

• Provide a draft Caribbean Classification of Occupations.

• Harmonize LMI concepts and definitions, used at the national level.

Who will benefit from the CLMIS?

Both producers and users of labour market information will benefit from the project output.

CLMIS producers

Producers of LMI such as Ministries of Labour, Central Statistical Offices, Ministries of Education, National Insurance Schemes, trade unions, employers' organizations and others, will benefit from the technical assistance and support of the CLMIS because it will:

• Strengthen the skills of their human resource pool. Working in close collaboration with international specialists, expertise at the institutional level will be enhanced in LMI methodologies, international standards in labour statistics and their integration in or adaptation to national and regional practices.

• Increase their LMI output. Output will be increased as a result of access to new and enhanced data sources, taking into account emerging user needs.

• Make their output more timely. One way of achieving this is to provide technical assistance and support to the efforts of national institutions to identify and solve bottle necks in the routine operation of surveys and other sources of LMI. The National Labour Market Information Library will also speed up the availability of output. In addition, it will provide each producer of LMI with a low cost and timely way of disseminating its own LMI. On the other hand, it will make available other LMI that producers need as the input for producing labour market indicators.

CLMIS users

In general the wide variety of users of LMI, including individual employers, employers' organizations, trade unions, Government planners, training institutions and academics will benefit from the increase in the amount and quality of policy relevant LMI, resulting from the implementation of the CLMIS project. Establishing a national set of key labour market indicators as part of the project support, will be a major step forward in making LMI available based on user needs. The practical use of this information by the following labour market actors are examples of how this will impact on the functioning of the labour market.

• Government planners can:
  - set and monitor minimum wages based on the actual wages paid and assess the impact of the changes in minimum wage on the total wage structure; and
  -analyse the relation between GDP growth and employment growth.
• Training agencies can monitor the labour market indicators they need in order to determine how to plan their activities.
• Employers can compare wage and productivity levels in their business with the national or regional averages.
• Trade Unions can monitor occupational wages and wage levels within or across industries.
• Individual job seekers, job counselling agencies and career planners can provide better advice on labour market and employment trends to clients based on the indicators adopted as national key indicators of the labour market.
  

Finally, there is a specific output of the CLMIS project, that has identified the employers' organizations and trade unions as beneficiaries of a training activity. Within the framework of the CLMIS, two computerized, statistical modules will be developed for both the trade unions and the employers' organizations. A train-the-trainers seminar based on these modules will provide the trade unions and the employers' organizations with the human resources needed to enhance their use and production of labour market information. The trainers will have the capacity to run follow-up, national programmes to develop the capacity of trade unions and employers' organizations to:

• generate statistics from their own membership and practice and

• produce standard analysis on available labour market information.

Areas for technical assistance:

I. Labour Market Information Plan

In order to make more and better labour market information available, proper planning is essential. The need for continuity and the costs involved in the production and dissemination of information are strong arguments for a systematic approach to decision-making in this area.

For policy makers to commit resources to LMI, they need to be informed and fully understand the needs and problems of producers and users of LMI. They further need well thought out, feasible solutions that are tailored to the nation's specific circumstances. Country specific circumstances include the "information culture" and the ability to pay for LMI.

The approach of the CLMIS is to support and assist countries in the design of a consistent plan that includes options to structure and formalize inter-agency cooperation. National consensus of the plan will facilitate decision-making, commitment to allocate resources and continuity of LMI activities. At the country level, the following activities will be implemented with project support:

• Formulate a LMI output and needs assessment.
• Draft a national set of key labour market indicators and build national commitment to produce and disseminate them with a certain periodicity.
• Draft a three-year National LMI plan.
• Draft the terms of reference for an inter-agency platform for collaboration between key producers and users of LMI, based on a three-year action programme.
• Identify areas of international collaboration and technical assistance.
• Convene a national seminar to reach consensus and generate commitment to the draft National LMI plan and the proposed structure for interagency collaboration.

II. National Classifications of Occupations (NCO)

During the 1970s and 80s, the NCOs in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were developed; all of which are national adaptations of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). Since the establishment of these NCOs, occupations have changed and new occupations have developed in the region. As a result, there is a need to adapt the NCOs to reflect these developments.

Furthermore, given the regional integration movement of CARICOM, the need for a regional classification system has been placed high on the LMI agenda. The CLMIS project will therefore seek to provide technical assistance to these countries in updating their NCOs.

At the same time, the smaller islands in the region lack funding and human resources to establish and update their own national classification systems. A regional classification system is therefore a potential means to meet the LMIS needs of these smaller countries. The updating of the existing national classification systems in accordance with international standards could thus serve as a model for the development of a regional classification system, which could ultimately benefit those countries in the region that lack classification systems.

III. Data from National Insurance Schemes

The databases of the National Insurance Schemes (NIS) in the Caribbean could be used to generate relevant labour statistics, particularly in countries that cannot sustain annual or more frequent surveys. However, the databases of the NISes in the region are currently not geared towards such a role. An assessment of the concepts, definitions and classifications used by the NIS, the information processing procedures and the database structure is needed to fully comprehend the potential of this information source. Such an assessment will provide the methodological basis for recommendations on necessary accommodations and guidelines on how to generate the employment statistics from these administrative databases.

The report from this assessment and the recommendations made will allow all institutions involved to make an informed decision on using the NIS databases as a source for statistical information. It is envisaged that this activity is extremely relevant to countries where the size of the populations and economies make sample surveys a very expensive statistical method for collecting information. The ability to pay for these surveys as well as other methodological considerations bears negatively on the use of this method as the only way of generating statistics for these countries.

IV. Occupational Wage Surveys

Statistics on wages, particularly by occupational category, is the least developed area in LMI in the Caribbean. At the same time, governments, employers and trade unions need this information to evaluate the labour market and issues of productivity. This information is needed to put policies on a solid ground with more and better knowledge of the levels and structure of wages and salaries in the Caribbean.

A total of four countries in the region currently produce wage statistics from sample surveys or other census type data collection models, most of which have indicated that they experience serious non-response problems. Other countries that do not have such surveys are in the process of establishing these or have requested technical support to do so.

The project aims to support and assist in establishing new Occupational Wage Surveys (OWS) and enhancing existing Occupational Wage Surveys. The output of these wage surveys is expected to feed into:

• National accounts data on labour costs.

• Computing productivity indicators, which is another activity within the overall CLMIS project.

• Collective Bargaining and tripartite consultations at the national and enterprise level.

• Efforts of some countries to establish a real wage index.

V. Labour Force Surveys

With the first Labour Force Survey (LFS) in the region established in the sixties and many countries establishing these surveys during the eighties, these surveys are currently the most developed source of labour market information in the region. However, firmly establishing these surveys in the remaining countries stagnated during the nineties. Part of the problem is that the small size of the populations and economies can make sample surveys a very expensive statistical method for collecting information. The ability to pay for these surveys as well as other methodological considerations bears negatively on the use of this method as the only way of generating statistics for these countries.

In countries with already established LFS, enhancement of these surveys has become an issue. New needs for LMI as a result of the process of regional integration, including the free movement of labour, gave rise to a demand for new items to be included in these surveys. It also increased emphasis on international and regional comparability of survey results and placed greater demand on timeliness of information, that can only be achieved by reducing the time between data collecting, processing and publication.

VI. Internationally-comparable Productivity Indicators

The developments in the new global financial order, more open international trade regimes under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the Free Trade Act Agreement (FTAA) and multi-lateral policies, have further placed small vulnerable economies and their labour markets under formidable pressure to adjust. The main challenge for these countries is to create new institutional capacities to deal with a rapidly changing environment.

The region needs to prepare for a number of issues such as the planned intensified economic integration within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as well as for participation in the FTAA, as well as the loss of some preferential trade treatment with the European Union. This raises concerns for and the need to design policies in some key labour-related areas such as productivity and competitiveness, occupational wages and labour costs, employment shifts, unemployment, underemployment and human resource development. To this end, internationally comparable productivity indicators are one of the critical indicators needed. Some Caribbean countries have been producing productivity indicators. In some cases, these are limited to the micro level while generally they are lacking international comparability.

The project will provide support and technical assistance that will focus on establishing the capability and the level of inter-agency collaboration needed to compute the indicators. This implies including these agencies in the development of the methodology and training. Harmonizing the methodologies and promoting inter-agency collaboration will root the productivity indicators in national practice and facilitate its sustainability.

VII. National labour market information libraries (N-LMIL)

Packaging timely LMI for dissemination, ensuring that it is user-friendly and cost effective is a challenge that most Caribbean countries face. This is partially due to the nature of LMI, which tends to be put out with a diverging frequency from a variety of sources managed by different institutions. In order to make LMI more policy relevant there is a need to include new forms of data dissemination that can make data more quickly available to users, at lower costs.

On the global level, the ILO has addressed this challenge by developing the Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM). The KILM is a global database with an integrated, user-friendly data-manipulation software tool. The latter facilitates analysis of the data by users. Creating a Labour Market Information Library (LMIL) to centralize all available labour statistics within the ILO was a significant improvement in compiling the KILM indicators.

The CLMIS will provide support and assistance to:

• Identify the content of the National Labour Market Information Library (N-LMIL). This implies reaching consensus on a key set of national labour market indicators. In order to compile these indicators, a multi-layered, electronic N-LMIL needs to be established and maintained.

• Establish the N-LMIL. The ILO will provide its tested methodology and software including the software for decentralized data entry and the integrated data manipulation tool. The ILO Caribbean Office will provide the information contained in its regional database, in the format used by the LMIL.

• Train staff of N-LMIL custodian in issues relating to:
  - procedures for the validation of information entered into system and
  - maintainance of the system and development of the software for country specific tables.

The N-LMIL will be primarily geared to suit the needs of national analysts and policymakers. However, its key advantage lies in the regional and international comparability of its content. If so requested, the system could be made accessible through the Internet.

Institutional Pre-requisites

• A national focal point to be established at the policy level who will take overall responsibility for the project. The focal point is expected to:
  - make the necessary link between the policy and the technical levels;
  - bring key players, such as the Director of the Statistical Bureau, Ministry of Finance, the Director of the NIS and others, together for the main decisions.

• A national LMI committee to provide a platform for technical specialists from various institutions producing or using LMI. In the region these national committees already exist in varying degrees.

• A national seminar to foster national consensus and ownership. These seminars will discuss the report on the assessment of LMI needs and output and the draft national LMI plan. These discussions should lead to recommendations to the national Governments.

 

For more information on this Project visit: http://www.ilocarib.org.tt/oldwww/clmis_web/index.htm

 

 

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