Jamaica has recorded an all-time high with consumers describing the current availability of jobs as adequate or plentiful, according to a recent business and consumer confidence survey.

Consumer confidence in Jamaica, which has been more favourable for a longer period than at any time since the survey began in 2001, saw a slight increase in index of 151.1 in the third quarter of 2017, slightly above the 149.3 in the 2nd quarter of 2017.

The index is also nearly identical with last year’s 151.6.

According to pollster Don Anderson, the confidence index over the past seven quarters has averaged 149.4. He added that consumers gave credit to the government’s economic policies, and increasingly to the actual expansion of business and job opportunities sparked by those policies.

Future job outlook also improved to 36 per cent, predicting more new jobs in the year ahead, up from last quarter’s 32 per cent.

“Today, consumers are placing hope in the realisation of jobs. Where is this hope coming from? It is not coincidental that today we are trying to dig more deeply into what is happening in the construction sector.

“When the data is analysed very carefully, there is a significant amount of construction activity over the last year and there were announcements recently of more construction activities to take place, and what this is doing of course is absorbing a significant amount of the unskilled labour and we know the unskilled labour equates largely to the low socio-economic group primarily. Therefore, it would take no rocket science to appreciate that we find that people in the low socio-economic group are becoming more confident about what’s happening,” Anderson noted.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-observer/consumer-hope-over-jobs-is-building_113539