SLPA — Unemployment at 10.1%
Reviewed: 9 September 2026
Canonical analysis: https://saintluciapolicy.org/research/unemployment-2026
Author: Kevin L. Michel / Saint Lucia Policy Analysis

The comparison CSV distinguishes official counts from SLPA reconstructions.
Q2 2026 employment (99,528) and unemployment rate (10.1%) come from the
Government / OPM release of 7 September, citing CSO survey results.
Q2 2026 labour force and unemployed counts are NOT CSO-published totals.

Accounting identity:
  unemployment rate = unemployed / (employed + unemployed)
  labour force = employed / (1 - unemployment rate as a proportion)
  Q2 2026 labour force = 99,528 / 0.899 = 110,709.677419...
  Q2 2026 unemployed = 110,709.677419... - 99,528 = 11,181.677419...
Values in the CSV are rounded to two decimals only to preserve this calculation;
these decimals are not evidence of measurement precision. Web figures round to
people and mark reconstructions with approximately / ≈.

Rate rounding to one decimal place implies an approximate labour-force range
110,648–110,771, assuming the reported employment value is held fixed. This
is NOT a confidence interval. Survey sampling error is additional and has not
been estimated here.

Official comparison counts:
Q1 2026: E 98,837; U 13,576; LF 112,413 (CSO Table 2).
Q2 2025: E 97,851; U 15,190; LF 113,041 (CSO Table 1).

Net differences from Q1 to Q2 2026:
E +691; LF approximately -1,703; U approximately -2,394.
Net differences from Q2 2025 to Q2 2026:
E +1,677; LF approximately -2,331; U approximately -4,008.
These are differences between estimated stocks, not individual worker flows.
They do not establish emigration, discouragement or causal policy effects.

The fixed-labour-force illustration holds the selected prior LF constant and
substitutes Q2 employment. It is arithmetic, not a causal decomposition:
Q1 LF held fixed -> unemployment 11.4621974%.
Q2 2025 LF held fixed -> unemployment 11.9540698%.

Quality notes:
The full Q2 2026 report was not located on the CSO pages checked as of this
review. The Q1 report gives youth unemployment 18.4%, while the September
announcement uses 18.5% for Q1. Its precision Table 1 concerns an 18.20%
estimate rather than the national 12.1% in Table 2. Those confidence limits
must not be assigned to the national result without clarification.
An April survey-modernisation announcement does not confirm which reference
quarter first used a changed method. Comparability remains an open question.
Youth age definitions must match before combining series: Q1 CSO uses 15–29;
parts of SLPA's earlier employment research use 15–24.

Sources:
https://www.govt.lc/news/saint-lucia-s-unemployment-rate-falls-to-10-1-in-second-quarter-of-2026
https://stats.gov.lc/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Labour_Force_Report_Q1_2026.pdf
https://stats.gov.lc/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Labour-Force-Statistical-Snapshot-2nd-Qtr.-2025.pdf
https://www.govt.lc/news/saint-lucia-modernizes-labour-force-survey-to-better-capture-today-s-workforce-data
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-08-05-02.pdf
https://stats.gov.lc/publications/