Statement

Employment has increased from 7.7 million in 2014 to 8.2 million in 2017.

Fact check

Minister Fernando is correct: the economy has added 500,000 jobs in the last three years.

In their election manifesto of 2015, the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) made a promise to create an additional million jobs in the economy. This provides a context for Minister Fernando’s statement, and makes it an important issue of public interest. Is the Minister correct in the claim that he makes?

In order to assess the factual accuracy of the claim, the FactCheck team looked at data contained in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS).

As seen in Exhibit 1, according to the DCS data, the number of jobs in the economy has increased from 7.7 million in 2014 to 8.2 million in 2017. Therefore, we have classified Minister Fernando’s statement as TRUE.

Exhibit 1: Employed population (2014 - 2017)