Registered Unemployed.
Unemployment:
This series is not published in the Bulletin.
Statistics Unit, Standards and Norms Section, Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of Manpower and Social Services.
The data from this series cover the whole country and are obtained through the employment registration offices, which are also referred to as the labour exchange. All persons 15 years of age up to the retirement age of 63 who register as seeking paid employment are covered.
The series is monthly and started in January 1978.
Unemployment: Total registered unemployment is the aggregate of four categories of unemployed:
1) Unemployed jobseekers are persons who were previously employed but are no longer in employment and seeking employment.
2) School leaver jobseekers are persons who have never worked before (i.e. have no formal job experience) and are seeking employment.
3) Underemployed jobseekers are persons whose working capacity is not fully utilised because they are working part-time (less than normal hours) i.e. those working for less than five hours per day; or are in casual employment and seeking employment.
4) Alternative jobseekers are persons already in employment but who are seeking alternative employment for whatever reasons.
Persons do not register as seeking only temporary or part-time work, although if these types of employment are available any suitable person may apply and work in them until a permanent job becomes available. School leavers under 21 years of age who have not completed their formal education may be included in the registry and be placed in employment but are not entitled to receive full pay from such employment until they have completed the "work experience programme". Persons on temporary or indefinite lay-off without pay, including redundancy workers, who register at the labour exchange to seek new jobs are included in the data. Re-entrants to the work force, employable disabled persons and those responsible for the loss of their last job are also included. Pensioners or persons receiving other benefits, students seeking temporary employment during vacations and persons on strike are not included in the series. In ILO publications data refer to the registered unemployed only, excluding persons already in employment.
Registration: Registration is obligatory which means that all persons seeking or applying for work, for all sectors of the economy, must register themselves at the labour exchange according to national legislation. There is no fixed frequency of required attendance.
Deletion from the register: Persons on the register who fail to turn up three times after having been called upon are removed from the list untill they call again at the employment centre to confirm that they are still job seeking. Refusal to take on any job due to its nature is permitted although the person must duly inform the employment centre; such refusal however leads to deletion from the register. For the duration of their participation in the "work experience programme", school leavers under 21 are deleted from the registry. Persons who have reached retirement age (63 years) and those who have not called at the labour exchange for over six months are also deleted from the registry, although the latter are put back on the register if they turn up subsequently. Temporary inability to work due to illness or accident and fraud do not lead to deletion. Deletion from the registry automatically means deletion from the unemployment statistics.
The reference period is the specific day or period of each month on which the count of unemployment is made.
In order to eliminate employed persons who remain recorded as unemployed with the unemployment centre, recent compulsory registration of all employees has been established. The unemployment data available from unemployment records are evaluated by comparison with alternative unemployment data obtained from the Labour Force Survey.
Registered unemployment rates are currently constructed on request only because of the inaccuracy of the registration data. (Unemployment rates based on the labour force sample survey, however, are available.)
Not applicable.
Republic of Seychelles, Ministry of Manpower: "Unemployment Bulletin" (monthly) (Mahé, Seychelles).
idem: "Statistical Abstract, 1986" (Mahé, Seychelles, 1988).