The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I have read the controversy involving the disparity in the figures between the Department of Statistics and the National Insurance Board with interest. I would now like to explain how National Insurance (NIB) operates, and how it is not compatible with the work done by the Department of Statistics.

All employers are supposed to submit monthly C-10s to NIB by the 15th of the following month. These C-10s should include all employees working during that month.

The C-10 provides a space for which new employees and exiting employees are to be specifically listed. While very few employers fill in these sections, this data is not used by NIB to track new employees.

Less than 25% of C-10s are submitted on time and even after one year an estimated 15% of contributions may not have been received.

Even though recent estimates made by the Department of Statistics place the employed Labour Force at between 165,000 and 170,000, NIB only gets submissions for around 115,000 to 120,000 employees each month and only around 145,000 individuals are on record as having made at least one contribution for a given year. Therefore, up to 50,000 employees and self-employed persons are not submitting regular monthly contribution information to NIB.

Given these gaps, NIB’s database does not show complete information on the recent employment of a large segment of the employed labour force.

Many employers are regular payers, some employers are sporadic payers and some others do not pay at all. Therefore, when a worker moves from one employer to another, and one of those employers is not a regular payor of NIB contributions, it is not possible to accurately determine if that “new” contributor has recently started or ceased employment.

Even if an employee shows up on NIB’s database as having contributed for the first time, it is not possible to know for sure if that was indeed their first job as a prior employer may not have been making contributions for them.

Over time, NIB’s contribution database becomes more complete as delinquent employers submit C-10s. Therefore the reliability of NIB data for tracking employment levels improves over time. However, with the number of NIB contributors being less than 85% of the employed labour force, even after three years have passed, NIB’s database does not provide a reliable source of new jobs created in the economy.

In summary, there are three main reasons why NIB’s database is not a reliable source for estimating the number of new jobs created between May 20012 and May 2014:

1. A large portion of NIB’s contribution data is received late;

2. A significant portion of employers (especially small ones) do not make regular contributions to NIB, and

3. NIB does not specifically keep track of one’s first employment date.

A TRUE BAHAMIAN

Nassau,

July 28, 2014.