The Department of Statistics of The Bahamas has released the results of its Labour Force and Household Income Survey, which was conducted in November of last year.

The survey provides information on the labour force as it existed during the reference period of October 24-30, 2011.

The results of the survey indicate that since the last survey conducted in May of 2011, there was a slight increase, less than one percent, in the size of the labour force, which now numbers 190,445 persons .

The number of women declined by 1.4 per cent, while their counterpart increased by 1.8 per cent, accounting for the overall minimal increase.

This is reflected in the overall participation rate, which remained basically the same. The participation rate for men increased marginally, 0.6 percentage points, while that of women fell by 1.2 percentage points.

In New Providence the number of persons in both the labour force and the employed labour force was almost equally distributed among the sexes.

In Grand Bahama however, the traditional pattern prevailed; men outnumbered women in both the labour force and the employed labour force and were fewer in numbers among the unemployed.

The data shows that there was a noticeable decrease in the number of employed persons and an increase in the number of unemployed persons resulting in the unemployment rate increasing by 2.2 percentage points and thereby pushing the country’s unemployment rate to 15.9 per cent.

From this year, the survey will be taken twice a year, in May and November.

Download/view the results of the survey here.