THE latest manpower figures have just been published by the States Statistics Unit, and they paint a picture of reasonable stability in the Island’s pattern of employment.

Although 1,520 new jobs were created in the 12 months to June, the total number of people employed at the end of the same period was, at 56,630, roughly comparable to the situation ten years ago. But these figures, like historical statistics, must be viewed with extreme caution. This is particularly true in the present circumstances.

The world’s financial system is in a state of chaos, and although Jersey is more fully insulated from the catastrophe than many communities, it cannot expect to remain unaffected by global events. As Chief Minister Frank Walker has pointed out, the emphasis in the near future is highly likely to shift from concerns about the danger of an overheating economy driving excessive immigration to the need for government to do what it can to protect jobs.

It is therefore the case that what obtained on the job front only a few months ago will soon be largely irrelevant as a new set of challenges emerges. At the practical level, this will call for astute and well-timed policy-making on the part of the new States Assembly and the Council of Ministers constituted after the elections — although all Members should be conscious that room for manoeuvre will be limited.

The June figures and their limited relevance in an entirely new economic landscape tell some home truths about the nature of employment in Jersey and the extent to which levels can be controlled.  As figures for a longer period do indeed show, there was rough parity between the number of jobs in 1998 and in the middle of summer this year. But they also show a changing pattern intimately linked to the state of the economy and its principal driver, the health of the financial services sector. When, in the early years of this new millennium, finance faltered, the num-ber of jobs fell for the most obvious of reasons.

In the present, as in the past, the right political action has the potential to iron out extreme fluctuations in the labour market, but we are deluding ourselves if we think that we have the power to override external circumstan-ces over which we have no control.