It will be interesting to see the statistics of youth unemployment - Hazelman

We still see a lot of youth unemployment and it would be interesting to see how much of the unemployment statistics concentrate on youth unemployment.

CEO of the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation Nesbitt Hazelman had this to say when Fijivillage asked him for comments on the unemployment statistics that was released by the Bureau of Statistics yesterday.

The unemployment rate was down to 4.5% according to the 2017 census - this is the lowest recorded in 20 years.

This is lower than the 5.5% unemployment rate estimated from the 2015‑2016 Employment and Unemployment Survey.

Hazelman says the 4.5% rate indicates that there are jobs being created in the country.

However, he says there are a lot of graduates who come out of tertiary institutes and have few jobs available for them.

Hazelman says the growth area in Fiji is the service sector.

He says a lot of people are going into the hotel industry but there is little concentration in the agriculture sector.

He says the agriculture sector will provide a lot of sustainable jobs for the livelihood of the nation.