The high rates of brain drain have been a longstanding lament across the Caribbean region, and once again, has been the focus of recent discussions. In this article, we argue that the brain drain has value to Caribbean countries, and instead, it may be prudent to better leverage it.

 

Brain drain. It is a phrase we, in the Caribbean region, are familiar with because every so often a big hullabaloo is made about the rate at which skilled persons are leaving the region to take advantage of better opportunities elsewhere. The impetus for the most recent uproar was the release of the 2022 human flight and brain drain index by TheGlobalEconomy.com, in which Jamaica was ranked second among the 177 countries surveyed. Further, and in addition to Jamaica, Haiti and Guyana were ranked within the top 10, at 9th and 10th respectively.

The latest index has been receiving considerable visibility and is being widely discussed in many quarters. Policymakers have cited the findings and have been lamenting the impact of the brain drain, and the need for Caribbean countries to aggressively address this issue. Areas such as education and nursing have been feeling the heat for several years, as thousands of teachers and nurses have been emigrating to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, which have been aggressively recruiting such expertise throughout the region to meet the demand in their respective home countries.

Having said this, the brain drain is also being acutely felt in the tech space, as organisations are finding it difficult to find and keep skilled personnel. However, as challenging as it is to secure good talent at the organisational level, it could be argued that the brain drain offers some benefits to a country.  To that end, we outline five reasons why Caribbean countries should not be embarrassed by the rate at which skilled persons are leaving their shores.

 

1.  People relocating for a better life is nothing new

To be clear and in the first instance, human flight in the Caribbean countries is not new. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, skilled and semi-skilled talent left British colonies to try to create a better life in the United Kingdom, and to a less degree, the United States and Canada. We can also go further back to the building of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s, and the skilled workers from across the Caribbean region who relocated to take advantage of the available opportunities.

We must also acknowledge the internal migration that has been and continue to occur in Caribbean countries, from rural to urban areas, that strain the infrastructure and resources in the main towns and cities. To a considerable degree, this internal migration is driven by education. Students originally from the countryside graduate with skills and qualifications from which there are few or no jobs in the areas of expertise in their hometowns. They thus need to relocate to major towns and cities to access work opportunities and eventually become established and permanent residents there.

 

2.  Highly skilled graduates with limited prospects in-country

We also have to acknowledge that in striving to give our students a first-world education, we have ended up in a situation where, depending on the field, our countries have skilled persons who are overqualified for the local job market. For example, if a handful of people from a particular Caribbean country studied advanced robotics, neural networks or artificial intelligence research, that country may have only a few openings each year (if at all), which is insufficient to absorb all of those who may want jobs in these fields.

At the heart of this challenge is the uneasy tension that exists between the following: an individual being able to fulfil their purpose through their choice of profession; the opportunity to train and develop the requisite expertise either at home or abroad; and whether they will be able to find work at home that utilises their expertise and allows them to make a decent living.

 

3.  Too few opportunities in our home country

Coupled with the previous point, is the fact that although a country may need certain skills, the potential supply may exceed the demand, and once again, result in people being unemployed or under-employed. In the tech space, we have people graduating with degrees in software engineering, electronic engineering, or with advanced programming skills, for example, but there are only a few vacancies in those areas relative to the size of the labour pool. There are considerably more vacancies for computer technicians or to work in the Management Information Systems Department to main office computers and networks.

Although working as Tech Support in an MIS Department is a job, little or none of the skills an individual had developed are being used in the position. Moreover, the compensation is likely to be modest, commensurate with the corporate view of such roles, which can affect a person’s sense of professional fulfilment and self-worth.

 

4.  A pipeline of skilled labour with nowhere to go

Every year, high schools, colleges and universities are churning out thousands of graduates who are entering the labour pool but with not enough jobs available to satisfy the annual demand. For example, if a country has 200 computer science graduates every year, for all of those graduates to be gainfully employed, either new openings for such skills are occurring or vacancies are being created because people are leaving. In many instances, it is the latter – attrition in the industry – that is the primary means by which talent is being absorbed from the labour pool. In other words, when people emigrate for work or to find better opportunities, it reduces some of the pressure on the country to create or find suitable jobs for all of its workers.

Creating a job is not as easy as it seems. In order for certain types of jobs to exist over the long term, it has to be supported by an ecosystem and/or a growing industry for the business to remain viable. Creating new industries or growing new ones does not happen overnight, which means that skilled talent for such industries would need to wait for several years until the industry is sufficiently established to require their skills. It is thus good that individuals are being proactive to find available opportunities from which they can benefit right away.

 

5.  We are an exporter of talent

Finally, and as much as we would not like to admit it, the Caribbean region has become an exporter of skilled labour. Our students and professionals are well-educated and hold their own among the best in the world, evidenced by the aggressive recruitment that has been happening in the region to fill positions in developed countries.

However, although this phenomenon has been occurring for decades, it could be argued that Caribbean countries and the region as a whole have not sought to fully leverage it. Without a doubt, there are opportunities to be had by formalising existing arrangements and practices with countries with a high demand for skilled labour, in order to have our countries benefit from the investment we have made in educating and building the capacity of our people, and the resulting loss when they emigrate to those countries for the opportunities being offered there.

 

In summary, the above are just a few of the benefits of brain drain to the Caribbean region. Yes, we are losing talent that could build our countries, but we cannot properly and consistently absorb the volume of talent we are producing. We also have a lot of work to do in developing cogent frameworks and plans to help guide the development of our countries, and create a broader range of options and opportunities to encourage more people to stay.

 

 

Image credit:  Erich Westendarp  (Pixabay)