Welcome to the Governor's Council of Economists

PRESS RELEASE

Statistics Institute releases new version of the Occupied Positions Report

A new programming improves the visualization of the statistics of positions held in the government

A new programming carried out by the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics will allow a better visualization of the Occupied Positions (PO) Report in the Government and the ability to compare current information with previous months, among other advantages. For the redesign of this report, free of charge and open source software was used R, so now it is done completely through this program, eliminating manual processes that were previously carried out.

“This new program is an advanced one because it optimizes the efficiency and effectiveness of statistical processes on this topic, improves our ability to monitor government positions with updated information, and allows comparisons to be made with previous years.”, said Dr. Orville M. Disdier, executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics.

The new design, as indicated by Ana Gabriela Jara Castro, manager of statistical projects at the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, includes a monthly report tabulated by agency and type of position, in addition to the time series, with the following information:

1. Number of POs at the end of the reference month, broken down by type of position (career, trust, temporary, irregular, among others) and by type of agency.
2. Monthly change in the number of POs by type of position and by type of entity.
3. Total PO for each government entity.

Jara Castro explained that, within this new format, a table (Table 4) was included that represents entities that have not reported their positions to the Office of the Comptroller for more than six months.

“The inclusion of this new table will allow the accountability process, for positions in government entities, to be a more transparent one, and more accessible to the population. The main objective of this report is to summarize the information of all the agencies represented in the Office of the Comptroller on its website,” said Ana G. Jara Castro, who was primarily responsible for the redesign of the report.

According to the website of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, the statistics presented in the Report on Statistics of Occupied Government Positions, come from the Register of Occupied Positions and Related Information, created under Act No. 103-2006, known as the Puerto Rico Government Tax Reform Act of 2006. This law states that every governmental entity has a duty to certify this information to the Comptroller's Office on a monthly basis. In those cases where the entity has not fulfilled its duty to certify its figures in a timely manner, the Statistics Institute performs a simple statistical attribution of the missing data to complete the statistics. All figures are under constant review and may change in future reports. The January 2021 edition is the most recent edition of this report and reflects that the number of total POs in government has fallen from 275,448 in January 2008 to 150,502 in January 2021. In the same way, “De Carrera” POs have fallen from 218,540 in January 2008 to 109,975 in January 2021. The report can be accessed through the following link: Statistics of Occupied Positions in the Government.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity tasked with coordinating the government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and accessible quickly and universally.

For more information you can visit the website: https://estadisticas.pr.gov/. In addition, you can follow the Institute on social networks, through Facebook (@estadisticas .pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Contact:

Idia M. Martinez, R-28

787-603-3200

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PRESS RELEASE

Office of the President

Vital for the country that mayors mobilize to obtain

Responses to the 2020 Census

President of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Statistics made an urgent appeal to municipal officials given the low participation of only 25% of the response

The president of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, economist and university professor Nicolás Muñoz-Muñoz, urged all mayors to mobilize the resources of municipal agencies to visit street by street, combing all communities to alert families to the importance of filling out the 2020 Population Census form. I am taking all preventive and protective measures as far as COVID-19 is concerned.

As of July 13, only 25% of families had answered the Census. This, according to Muñoz, represents half of those who had answered the Census in 2010. In mid-July, the level of response in municipalities ranged from 14 to 31 percent. “It is vital for municipalities and their inhabitants that the federal funds that arrive are not reduced by 25% or more. Without downplaying the exercise of the democratic right to vote, designating resources to help citizens complete the Census should be considered as meritorious as the efforts being made for the primary and electoral process,” Muñoz said.

“If mobilization were not promoted to encouraging communities to dedicate 15 minutes to answering the form, we would add another disaster to the chain of events that have occurred in the country since the earthquake in January to the present. In this case, a disaster whose consequences would last 10 years,” said Muñoz.

The economist explained that, if 25% of the population does not answer, Puerto Rico could result in a population of less than 3 million and could receive 25% less federal funding, equivalent to $5 billion annually or $50 billion over 10 years, if we consider an average current allocation of $20 billion annually. This is without considering additional special allocations in the case of natural disasters.

It was also reported that more than 300 federal programs base the distribution of funds on population data. These programs include federal funding for road construction, agriculture, rural development, housing, urban development, solid waste management, telecommunications infrastructure, drinking water, protection of coastal resources, assistance for paying household rent, education, justice, nutrition assistance programs, school breakfasts, child care, workforce development under the WIOA Act (among other laws), assistance for the elderly and health, including Medicaid, and other programs.

“The economic situation of municipalities will worsen if access to federal funds allocated by Congress is reduced. Every Puerto Rican who can read and write can fill out the Census form. It can be filled out “online” or on paper. Each neighbor can help another neighbor who can't read and write or how to fill it out, particularly older adults. It's everyone's job, but mayors, who are the officials closest to the needs of citizens, must exercise their leadership in this vital priority for Puerto Rico,” Muñoz concluded.

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Press Contact:

Idia M. Martínez

787-603-3200

imartinez@upfrontpr.net

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