The Statistical Institute of Belize has released the latest unemployment figures, and they show that a higher unemployment rate.  

The Labour Force survey of April 2017, showed that when compared to April of 2016, there were over two thousand more persons unemployed.  Statistician Curwen Arthurs explained:

Curwen Arthurs - Statistician I, SISB
"With last year's rate of 8% which one of the lowest in almost a decade, it was expected that rate would have raised, increased since then; experiencing such a low rate. So this time around we saw that the rate increased marginally by 9% and this was because the labour force was growing at a pace a bit faster than persons were actually gaining jobs. If we look at the rates by district, we see that only the Belize and Stann Creek district had rated higher than the national rate of 9% with Stann Creek having the highest rate at 13.1% and Belize having the second highest rate at 10.9%. The Toledo district again remains with the lowest rate, almost identical to what it was in 2016 at 3.9%. The rates by ethnicity there was a bit of a shift from 2016 where the group with the highest rate of unemployment were the Garifuna followed by the Creole."

On the upside, the labour force has also grown, and there are 3,194 more jobs compared to last year.