CNMI income, expenditure survey now in the works

The Department of Commerce is preparing to conduct a “Household Income and Expenditure Survey” in the Commonwealth and is now studying a plan of action for it.

Commerce Secretary Mark O. Rabauliman said the department’s Central Statistics Division and contractors are preparing the plan of action but no date or timeline has been set yet.

The department will use $307,672 from the Office of Insular Affairs to conduct the survey. The funding was secured in April.

In the grant funding, Commerce is being asked “to obtain, compile, and disseminate data on household income and expenditures in the Northern Mariana Islands and to provide cost-effective economic indicators, data, and performance measures related to economic development and self-sufficiency needs.”

The survey is also expected to provide information about the current labor force to include data on U.S.-qualified versus foreign workers, characteristics of wage earners, including those earning minimum wages, and impacts of migrants under the Compacts of Free Association.

Rabauliman said the Governor’s Office and other CNMI government departments have been stressing the need for such data. “We hope to capture an overall picture from this set of data that the government badly needs,” he said.

On Monday, Department of Labor Secretary Edith Deleon Guerrero said the survey by Commerce will help the government address issues on manpower requirements by the CNMI in light of the end of the foreign worker program in 2019.

Deleon Guerrero said that more than 10,000 individuals in the CNMI are not looking for work and are dependent on welfare programs such as food stamps.

This huge chunk of the population would greatly help the CNMI’s expected labor shortfall in 2019 when is comes to local manpower pool.

An expenditure survey would hopefully help the government get a clearer picture of basic and up-to-date economic data, considering that the last survey was conducted in 2005.

“Yes, I also saw the shortfall in manpower that the Labor secretary mentioned, and I share the same concerns. I would support any strategy to address this concern,” Rabauliman said.

OIA Assistant Secretary Esther Kia’aina, in an earlier statement, said the “these initial projects will provide timely and critical information, analyses, and data for CNMI decision-makers.”

Last completed in 2005, the HIES project is long overdue, given that the Commonwealth’s once-prominent garment industry has folded and customs and immigration has been taken over by the U.S. federal government.

Prevailing wage survey

Rabauliman said his department has completed a prevailing wage survey and is expecting to deliver a courtesy presentation to the Governor’s Office early next week.

The official said all the details of the survey, including data analysis, have all been completed. “If the schedule allows it, the intent is to present the findings early next week,” Rabauliman said.

The prevailing wage survey is important to CNMI businesses when hiring workers under the H-1 visa category.

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce earlier said that the CNMI developing its own prevailing wage study is important because using the prevailing wage in Guam “is unfair and detrimental to the local economy.”