Above: Port of Spain

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The local unemployment rate in Trinidad fell to 4.2 percent in the last quarter of 2011, according to a report from Trinidad’s Central Statistical Office.

That number represented a reduction from a 5.2 percent rate from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2011.

In the last quarter of 2010, the mark stood at 6.3 percent.

The labour force increase came largely among craft and related workers and elementary occupations.

A total of 621,900 persons were employed at the end of 2011, up from a total of 609,500 at the end of the third quarter of 2011 — a two percent increase.

There was also an increase in female employment, with a 3.8 percent improvement in the final quarter of 2011.

Men continued to have the larger share of the labour force at 59.1 percent.