In Pursuit of Employable Skills. Understanding Employers' Demands: Analysis of the Bahamas' 2012 Wages and Productivity Survey

The Inter-America n Development Bank (IDB), through the Labour Markets and Social Security Unit, has been supporting a comprehensive labour market study (LMS) in The Bahamas to collect and analyse data that will provide guidelines for labour market policies on training provision to enhance employability and productivity in the country and other issues. This work is part of a regional project to improve understanding of these issues throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The Bahamas has relatively high living standards, and ranks as a High Human Development country. But there are important challenges: high exposure to shocks; high dependency on the external economy; skills shortages and high unemployment. The analysis performed for this LMS also finds that there is space for improving the alignment of training provision to new skills demands from the employers in different industries.