There is a conversation Jamaica needs to have, and it is not simply about the rising cost of living. It is about the falling value of work.
Every week, Jamaicans go to work, collect salaries, pay bills and discover that their money has become smaller without anyone actually reducing the number printed on their pay cheque.
The salary may be the same. The worker may be working just as hard. The hours may be just as long. But the life that salary can purchase is becoming increasingly limited. That is the real crisis.
We call it inflation. We call it the cost of living. We call it rising food prices. We call it transportation costs. We call it high electricity bills. All of these descriptions are accurate. But they do not fully capture what is happening to the Jamaican worker. The problem is that income is increasingly struggling to keep pace with the cost of participating in ordinary Jamaican life.
That distinction matters because when a person cannot comfortably afford food, transportation, housing, utilities, education and healthcare after working for an entire month, telling that person that inflation is 7.9 per cent does not solve the problem. It explains the problem.
Statistics matter, but people experience economics in supermarket aisles. They experience it at the gas pump. They experience it when school expenses arrive. They experience it when the electricity bill comes. They experience it when a child needs medication. They experience it when rent is due. They experience it when they stand at the market and have to decide which items can remain on the shopping list.
Jamaica’s latest inflation figures should therefore concern all of us. The Statistical Institute of Jamaica reported that inflation reached 7.9 per cent in August, well above the Bank of Jamaica’s 4 to 6 per cent target range. Food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by 1.5 per cent during the month, with increases in items including Irish potato, sweet potato, cabbage, tomato and pumpkin.
Then came the market reality. Reports from Coronation Market this week put lettuce at $1,200 per pound, ripe bananas at $1,000 per dozen, tomatoes and sweet peppers at approximately $500 per pound, and several other staples around $400 per pound. Vendors have linked shortages and higher prices to the prolonged drought.
These are not merely numbers. They are decisions. A mother deciding whether she can buy fruit. A father deciding whether he can afford enough vegetables. A family deciding whether meat remains on the menu. A student deciding whether transportation money can stretch to Friday. A worker deciding whether to postpone a doctor’s visit. A household deciding whether to repair something now or wait another month. This is what inflation looks like when it enters people’s lives.
THE HARDER QUESTION
Perhaps Jamaica therefore needs to stop asking only, “How high are prices?” We need to ask a more consequential question: “How much life can a Jamaican salary actually buy?” That is a much harder question.
The minimum wage debate illustrates the point. The minimum wage increased by $1,000 in July, moving from $16,000 to $17,000 per 40-hour week for regular workers and security guards. Yet stakeholders have argued that the increase does little to offset the cost of living. The debate should not be reduced to whether $1,000 is a large or small increase. The more important question is what that $1,000 can actually purchase. If the additional money disappears into transportation, food or utilities within days, then the nominal increase does not necessarily translate into a meaningful improvement in living standards.
This is the danger of looking at wages only in nominal terms. A salary is not meaningful simply because the number gets larger. Its purchasing power matters. The real question is whether the worker can do more with the salary. If a person receives a raise but must spend even more on food, transport and housing, the psychological experience may not be one of advancement. It may be one of running faster to remain in the same place.
That is where Jamaica’s national conversation about productivity, employment and economic growth needs greater depth. We routinely tell Jamaicans that education is the pathway to upward mobility. We encourage young people to acquire qualifications. We tell them to develop skills. We tell them to work hard. We tell them to become entrepreneurs. We tell them to pursue careers in high-demand sectors. All of this is sound advice. But what happens when a person follows the advice and still cannot afford a reasonable standard of living?
What happens when a qualified teacher, nurse, police officer, administrator or technician finds that the cost of housing, food and transportation consumes an extraordinary proportion of income? What happens when young professionals delay home ownership, marriage, children or further education because their salaries cannot comfortably support those decisions? That is not merely a personal financial problem. It becomes a national development problem.
A country cannot build a stable middle class if its middle class is constantly being pushed toward financial insecurity. And Jamaica needs to be particularly concerned about the young. We want young Jamaicans to stay. We want them to build businesses. We want them to buy homes. We want them to start families. We want them to invest. We want them to contribute their skills to the country. But young people are rational. If the relationship between work and reward becomes increasingly unattractive, some will look elsewhere.
Migration is not caused by one thing, but economic opportunity is undeniably part of the conversation. A country that spends years educating and training its citizens but cannot create conditions in which their earnings provide a reasonable quality of life risks exporting the very human capital it needs to develop.
This is why the cost of living should not be treated merely as a consumer complaint. It is a competitiveness issue. It is a productivity issue. It is a labour market issue. It is a demographic issue. It is a national development issue. And now, increasingly, it is a food security issue.
THE AGRICULTURAL DIMENSION
The drought makes the situation even more complicated. When farmers cannot reliably produce, supply falls. When supply falls, prices can rise. When prices rise, households buy less. When households buy less, nutrition can suffer. And when nutrition suffers, children and vulnerable adults can be affected. The drought is therefore not simply a problem for farmers. It is eventually a problem for every Jamaican who eats.
The Government has recognised the agricultural dimension and announced an additional $50 million for drought intervention, including water storage and drip irrigation systems. Those measures are important. But Jamaica should be asking a bigger question. Why should our food system be so vulnerable to the absence of rain?
If drought is becoming a recurring reality, then water management must become central to agricultural policy. We need more storage, more efficient irrigation, better water harvesting, improved agricultural technology, stronger support for farmers and better data. Most importantly, we need a serious national conversation about what food security actually means.
Food security cannot mean that food exists somewhere. It means ordinary Jamaicans can reasonably afford nutritious food when they need it. That distinction is crucial. A supermarket shelf filled with food does not necessarily mean a household is food secure. If the prices are beyond the reach of working families, accessibility has failed.
This brings us back to wages. Perhaps Jamaica has spent too much time debating whether salaries should increase and not enough time debating what kind of economy can sustainably support higher real incomes. Simply increasing wages without addressing productivity, energy costs, transportation, housing, food production and business competitiveness can create other pressures. We therefore need a much more sophisticated national conversation.
We need to ask what it takes to increase real wages, not simply salaries. Real wages represent the amount of goods and services that workers can actually purchase with their earnings. Increasing them requires attention to productivity. It requires competitive industries. It requires affordable energy. It requires reliable infrastructure. It requires efficient transportation. It requires housing policies that prevent workers from spending an unsustainable portion of their income simply to have somewhere to live. It requires food production systems that are resilient to drought. It requires skills that command higher incomes. And it requires businesses that can create value rather than simply pass rising costs from one person to another.
This is where the Jamaican debate sometimes becomes too narrow. Workers ask for higher wages. Employers worry about rising labour costs. Government worries about inflation. Consumers complain about prices. Farmers complain about production costs. Everyone is responding rationally to their own pressures. But Jamaica needs to step back and examine the system connecting them.
The worker is also the consumer. The employer is also affected by inflation. The farmer buys fuel. The transport operator buys food. The teacher pays rent. The nurse buys groceries. The small business owner pays electricity. We are all inside the same economic ecosystem. When costs rise throughout that ecosystem, simply moving money from one pocket to another does not solve the underlying problem. We have to increase the country’s capacity to produce more value at lower cost.
That is the difficult conversation. It is also the necessary one. We need more productivity, more innovation, more domestic production, more efficient public services, more competitive businesses, more resilient agriculture, more affordable energy, more efficient logistics and better alignment between education and the jobs of the future. Otherwise, Jamaica risks entering a cycle in which every salary increase is rapidly absorbed by higher prices.
The worker gets more money. The supermarket gets more money. The landlord gets more money. The utility company gets more money. The transport operator gets more money. But the worker is not necessarily better off. That is not sustainable.
FINANCIAL PRESSURE CHANGES BEHAVIOUR
There is also a social consequence that we should not underestimate. Financial pressure changes behaviour. People postpone medical care. They borrow more. They use credit cards. They reduce food quality. They take second jobs. They work longer hours. Parents reduce spending on enrichment activities for children. Young people postpone important life decisions. And eventually exhaustion becomes normal.
A society cannot thrive when too many of its working people are permanently exhausted from trying to maintain a basic standard of living. Work should provide dignity. It should provide security. It should provide a reasonable pathway toward a better life. It should not simply provide enough money to keep a person technically afloat.
This is why Jamaica’s economic conversation should move beyond GDP. Economic growth matters. Debt matters. Inflation matters. Investment matters. But the ultimate test of an economy is also very simple: Can ordinary people build decent lives from the work they do?
If the answer becomes increasingly uncertain, then economic statistics alone cannot tell the whole story. We should celebrate economic recovery when it occurs. But recovery must eventually reach households. Growth must eventually reach households. Productivity gains must eventually reach households. Investment must eventually reach households. Otherwise, citizens are entitled to ask what exactly is improving in their lives.
The answer cannot simply be that the economy is growing. An economy exists for people. Perhaps that is the conversation Jamaica needs now. Not whether people are working. They are. Not whether people are trying. They are. Not whether families are budgeting. They are. The question is whether the system is giving their effort enough purchasing power to produce the lives they are working for.
Because Jamaica does not have a shortage of hardworking people. What we may increasingly have is a shortage of economic breathing room. And that is a national problem.
The Jamaican worker should not have to become a financial contortionist simply to survive from one payday to the next. A salary should not disappear before the month has properly begun. A supermarket trip should not feel like an exercise in mathematics and disappointment. A parent should not have to choose between groceries and a child’s school needs. A young professional should not have to wonder whether leaving the country is the only way to make education and hard work financially worthwhile. And a farmer should not have to pray for rain as though rainfall were an agricultural policy.
These are not isolated complaints. They are signals. The drought is signalling weakness in our food system. Inflation is signalling pressure on household purchasing power. The wage debate is signalling pressure in the labour market. Migration pressures are signalling concerns about opportunity. The challenge is whether we will treat each signal separately or understand that they are connected.
Jamaica does not simply need cheaper food. It needs a stronger food system. It does not simply need higher wages. It needs higher real incomes. It does not simply need economic growth. It needs inclusive economic progress. It does not simply need people to work harder. It needs an economy in which hard work produces greater returns.
That is the conversation we should be having. Because there is a dangerous illusion in telling people that they are doing well simply because their salary has increased. The real question is what happened to the value of that salary.
If a Jamaican earns more but can afford less, the number on the payslip is not the whole story. Perhaps it is time we stopped measuring prosperity by how much money enters people’s pockets and started paying greater attention to how much life that money can actually buy.
Because the greatest economic achievement is not making Jamaicans earn more money. It is creating a Jamaica in which working people can do more with the money they earn.
– Leroy Fearon Jr, J.P, M.Sc., is a lecturer, multi-disciplinary researcher, author, geography specialist, columnist, Governor General’s Achievement Awardee ’24 and Governor General I Believe Initiative (IBI) Ambassador ’24. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and leroyfearon85@gmail.com. ONLINE ONLY COMMENTARY.
