New data from the Inter-American Development Bank (2024) reveals a striking paradox about poverty in Guyana: it isn’t a story of joblessness. Employment rates among the poor are remarkably high, 77% for the extreme poor and 83% for the moderate poor. And they’re not working short hours either. Guyana’s poor clock the longest work weeks in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, averaging 52 hours for the extreme poor and 58 hours for the moderate poor, while the non-poor work around 64. Compare that to most LAC countries, where weekly hours sit in the 30–40 range, and the picture becomes clear, Guyanese workers are putting in exceptional effort.

So where’s the breakdown? In what each hour actually pays. For every US dollar the non-poor earn per hour, the extreme poor take home just 25 cents and the moderate poor 43 cents, a gap roughly matching the regional average. The issue isn’t that Guyana’s poor lack jobs or shirk work; it’s that the labor market pays them far too little for the hours they give. Tackling poverty here means raising the value of work, not just creating more of it.

Source: Authors’ calculations based on Inter-American Development Bank (2024), Data and Indicators from Latin America and the Caribbean, Harmonized Household Surveys Collection. Figures 8A, 8C, and 8D.