The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is progressing towards completing a first-of-its-kind study which will highlight the "critical issues" of unemployment, skills mismatches and productivity in The Bahamas, according to a senior official at the bank.

Providing an update on the status of a labor market study for The Bahamas launched in 2012, Laura Ripani, senior economist in the IDB's Labour Market and Social Security Unit, said that key data was gathered from more than 500 organizations across major industries in The Bahamas during the initial stages of the study.

Eventually, the analysis is intended to assist policymakers and the private sector to improve their planning tools, and provide for "the implementation of both national and employer-based policies to develop effective training and to increase the labor force's skills base and productivity".

The study should provide the most comprehensive insight to date into issues of structural unemployment and productivity in this nation.

Last week, former Minister of State for Finance and CFAL Chairman James Smith, suggested that it is key that The Bahamas studies its unemployment and skills mismatch challenges in more depth if it is to implement more informed policies to address joblessness.

Similarly, Nikolaos Karagiannis, an economist who has studied The Bahamas for over a decade, called last month for Bahamian officials to undertake a labor survey which would compliment a national development strategy by identifying which areas will require more skilled professionals going forward.

Karagiannis proposed that this would assist students to strategically select their education paths in a way that reduces the "glut" of lawyers, doctors and accountants and ensure that there are sufficient qualified individuals to support a more diversified economy.

The IDB is collaborating with the Bahamas Department of Statistics, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation and the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce on the project.

"The WPS is the first survey to collect information on critical issues from the perspective of the employers in The Bahamas and for most economic sectors. Fieldwork for the WPS commenced in January 2012 and finished in May 2012 with 505 respondent firms - 373 in New Providence, 132 in Grand Bahama.

"It is the first survey to quantify data on skills needs and training practices for most industries in the country. This particular survey is part of a series conducted for Honduras, Panama and Uruguay; it is the first in the Caribbean region," said Ripani.

"In addition to the WPS, two analyses have been made. The first one is a complementary training mapping exercise which helped to provide evidence-based information on whether the education system is adequately supplying the market with the right mix of skills. The second one is an analysis of the Bahamas Labour Force Surveys (LFS), to better understand the skills of the population."

Analyses of the 2012 WPS, combined with analyses of the Bahamas Labour Force Surveys (LFS), consultations with private sector employers and training providers, and a training mapping of the main training institutions conducted for the Labour Market study, will highlight three critical issues, according to the development bank, These are unemployment, which is particularly high for youth and workers with lower education levels; skills mismatches between labor demand and supply; and a lack of integration between employers' needs and the design of education and training provisions.

According to the IDB, this labor market analysis is presently under internal peer review by specialists of the bank and will be shared with the Government of The Bahamas by December of this year. Preliminary results were shared with the government and private stakeholders in February and April 2013.

"These meetings were essential to have early feedback and reactions to the results to be incorporated in the final version of the study," said Ripani.

The IDB plans to disseminate the results of the study throughout the private and public sectors in early 2014, before releasing the outcomes to the public shortly after.

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