Economic Expert Explains "Why 85% of Jamaican Graduates Leave within 5 Years"

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Our labor force is not sufficiently skilled at a level where it will drive economic growth in any robust or meaningful way. So you're just looking at But but but but what do you mean? We have a lot of universities too. I personally I I studied engineering and I graduated with thorough 1 50 to maybe 100 people. UWI UTech I I turn out a lot of doctors, engineers, um people with MBAs, people with degrees, tertiary levels. So I would think that that would be a good injection into the Jamaican economy. Well, can I shock you? You and I who have university degrees are less than 15% of the entire labor force.

[00:00:43]Well, yeah. Well, that's less than 15. Yeah, around 15, 16%. So the vast majority of people who are working in Jamaica, who have a job, don't have a degree or much less they have a upper secondary education. That's where they fall. So, you know, we are in a rarefied territory where that is concerned. And of course, you know, you can make the argument that you may not need a degree, you may not need a certification, but in aggregate, 70% of people in the workforce don't have any certification at all for the jobs that they do.

[00:01:25]So it's not just about university degrees or who graduates the year, um you know, how many people graduate in a single year. It's just that in other countries where the difference is stark in development, you find maybe at least you have a third of the population who have um tertiary education or me even a half. But at 15%, while that is better than it was 20 to 25 years ago, we still have a long way to go.

[00:01:57]So wouldn't that Let's see. Is it the chicken before the egg or the egg before the chicken?

[00:02:02]Because if I should take an investment in myself to go to university to upskill myself and then go into a workforce that isn't showing me the ability that they can pay me what I deem I deserve, wouldn't that be like a a bad investment? I would have to see that the economy is ready for people of my skill level. So, maybe that's why a lot of people aren't going to university or is it a case where they can't even afford university? So, is it a case where the income should go up first or people should just get certified and and and if they can't get it here, then migrate? Well, the thing is a lot of people who have been educated have have been migrating. So, around 85% of people who are tertiary graduates migrate within 5 years of graduation. And that is a commonly cited statistic. It was from a World Bank report that covered the period 1965 to 2000. So, we're talking about more than 25 years ago. You can only imagine how worse it has gotten since then. So, it put us in the top two of the Caribbean. I believe it was either Grenada or Guyana was was um number one and we were number two.

[00:03:19]So, our brain drain is really uh you know, not anything to scoff at because it is among the highest in the world. And it just goes back to the inefficiency in labor market. Persons uh quite fairly have uh made the comment that, you know, you can't really get jobs unless you you have links. And so, that that distorts the efficiency in the labor market. You're not looking for the best qualified and of course I'm going to take my qualifications elsewhere and you would not want to prevent people from doing that because you want a free flow or international mobility of labor, just as you may want or you may not prevent people from coming to Jamaica if the right opportunity for them arises. But, it goes back to the growth problem. If we don't grow or diversify industries or expand, um, you know, on the sectors that we have right here, then people will always leave for for better pastures.

[00:04:24]And the statistic I gave about the number of people who leave every single year, they uh, it's easier for larger countries with much bigger labor forces in the UK, the US, and, um, Canada to absorb 25,000 people. It's not not difficult to absorb 25,000 people every single year, but for us, you know, uh, you don't find that number of people getting jobs in a quarter or even put possibly in a single year.

[00:04:55]So, it's all a matter of scale where you will now have automatically better opportunities abroad simply because there are there are more of them.

[00:05:03]But, for now, re-aligning that calculus between people going for qualifications and now getting the right job out here, you can't force people to stay, you know, in the in the name of patriotism or or nation building. People must now be incentivized to stay because they see that opportunities are here, and that might apply to some individuals who take them up.

[00:05:28]But, again, it's just like the the whole high school argument, you know, uh, if we have high schools that are are better, but they are further from where I live, I'm going to try to make an effort to go there. You should not send me to a school to try to improve the quality of that school by my performance, right? It must be that powers that be, the government and any other relevant stakeholders can create right conditions that will automatically make it so that I will want to stay.