Walking for a chance - Scarlett refuses to sit and wait for work

By the time the morning sun begins beating down on Kingston’s asphalt, Doreen Lillian Scarlett is already sweating. Still, the 35-year-old keeps walking.

With a bundle of résumés tucked under her arm, she has been moving from office to office across the Corporate Area, pausing only when someone is willing to take one.

The journey, which started in July, has taken her through Half-Way Tree, New Kingston, Hope Road, Trafalgar Road and downtown, covering streets in the hope that, somewhere along the way, an employer will give her the chance she desperately needs.

Since the endeavour started, Scarlett has delivered 135 résumés – some on foot, others online and via email. So far, she has been invited to four interviews, but none of the interviewers has called back – favourably, at least.

However the University of the West Indies (UWI) student is running out of money. The little she managed to save while employed years ago, along with the part-time income she earns as an unofficial tour guide, is being consumed daily as the cost of simply living mounts.

“I walk most of it,” Scarlett told The Sunday Gleaner. “What I do is section the résumés based on the proximity of the places. So, if I’m doing Ripon Road, I’m also doing Oxford Road and Half-Way Tree Road. And then I do all of New Kingston, Hope Road and Trafalgar Road.”

It is an arduous walk for many in Jamaica’s sweltering sun, but Scarlett does not mind. A self-described hiker who enjoys exercise, she laughs off the physical discomfort.

“It is good for your body,” she said smiling, her amusement dwindling as she explained why she does it.

She needs a job – fast.

“A whole heap of people have told me that they wouldn’t do what I am doing, but I have to pay my rent and I have to live. I also want better for myself,” said the second-year accounting student, whose unique and relentless job-seeking journey has gone viral online.

Scarlett’s determination has been forged over a lifetime.

She grew up in a family of vendors, and her mother sold for many years at the entrance to Camperdown High School, often taking young Scarlett with her until nightfall.

However, Scarlett wanted something different for herself.

She says she graduated from Clan Carthy High School, passing seven of eight subjects, later sat mathematics at Dunoon Technical, and moved on to Excelsior Community College. There, she says, accounting began to take shape – more as a passion than a subject. She says she later spent two years at the University of Technology (UTech) pursuing a qualification in the field.

Was on track to

achieving her dreams

With a job earning a decent wage at a financial institution, she was on track to achieving her dreams.

Then her mother became ill, followed soon after by her father, and Scarlett did what she had done throughout much of her life – she put others first.

Caring for her mother, who suffered from diabetes and had several strokes before her death in 2019, her ailing father and a young niece, while juggling school and work, became too much. Inevitably, her education and career had to be put on pause.

Now, years later, Scarlett is once again on the journey to completing her studies.

“Most of my money went into her (mother’s) health. Then I was assisting my brother with school and I was also taking care of my niece,” she said, reflecting on the cost of years spent putting family ahead of herself.

“Sometimes your life takes a turn for a reason. Because I was on track.”

“... the error that I made”

“Sometimes we do things backwards, feeling that we should help everybody when you are supposed to try to help yourself first and then you help them. I just did it the other way around, and that is just the error that I made,” she said, her words laden with regret but not defeat.

Now, she is set on completing UWI. After that, she wants to pursue a master’s degree and doctorate in accounting.

But, with university fees, rent of more than $20,000, utilities and other expenses, simply surviving — let alone pursuing her dreams — is becoming increasingly expensive.

“I make sure that I budget out the rent first, make sure the landlord gets his money. It is rough. A whole heap of budgeting has to go on, more than the normal. Now, I can’t spend wildly; most of it has to go into bills and food. If I don’t have to leave my house, I don’t leave,” said Scarlett, adding that she usually takes public transportation from Portmore, St Catherine to Kingston before starting her walks.

Scarlett’s persistence comes at a time when finding work in Jamaica can be a frustrating exercise.

The country’s unemployment rate has fallen to historically low levels, reaching 3.3 per cent in 2025 before edging up to 3.7 per cent in April this year.

On paper, that suggests a labour market where work should be relatively accessible.

But the reality is more complicated, experts suggest.

In January, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) reported that 1,389,400 people were employed – 30,100 fewer than a year earlier – while 714,800 people were outside the labour force (meaning they are not employed and not looking for work).

Jamaica’s unemployment rate

In April, the Planning Institute of Jamaica, in its Performance Review for April-June 2026, reported that Jamaica’s unemployment rate stood at 3.7 per cent, but the number of people employed had fallen by 25,700 compared with a year earlier.

Youth unemployment also climbed to 11.7 per cent from 10.1 per cent the previous year, against the backdrop of the continued fallout from Hurricane Melissa, which disrupted businesses, livelihoods and productive activity.

The report put the total labour force in the April-June period at 1,473,900, with 1,418,800 people employed and 55,00 unemployed. Some 681,900 people were outside the labour force.

The government, meanwhile, has signalled that Jamaica’s labour-market challenge is changing.

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has called for a new labour policy suited to an economy approaching full employment, while arguing that the focus must increasingly shift from simply creating jobs to improving productivity and generating higher-value employment.

For Scarlett, however, the figures mean little in the face of her immediate reality.

For now, that reality is the 135 résumés in her hands and the miles beneath her feet.

Still, she is pushing forward, one résumé at a time.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com

Potential employers can reach Doreen Lillian Scarlett at 876-367-3338