500,000 jobs in the last three years - Minister Fernando is correct; the economy has added

Daily News, on 3rd October 2018, reported the above statement made by Minister Harin Fernando.

The United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG), in their election manifesto in 2015, made a promise to create an additional million jobs in the economy. This provides context for Minister Fernando’s statement, and makes it an important issue of public interest.

Is the Minister correct in the claim that he makes?

In order to assess the factual accuracy of the claim, the Factcheck team looked at data contained in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS).

As seen in Exhibit 1, according to the DCS data, the number of jobs in the economy has increased from 7.7 million in 2014 to 8.2 million in 2017. Therefore, we have classified Minister Fernando’s statement as TRUE.