Editorial Note: The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) is an affiliate of Stingray Media Group, which intends to sell work-permit classified advertising in this newspaper and operates the eCayHire hiring platform.

Michael Myles MP, the Minister for Caymanian Employment and Immigration, told Parliament on 1 October that the government proposes to end the requirement that employers advertise a vacancy in a newspaper before applying for a work permit. His written statement, published by Parliament, said the approach "reduces the administrative and financial burden on employers while ensuring that Caymanians continue to have access to employment opportunities through both a centralised online platform and a traditional printed medium".

The change is expected to come to Parliament this month, according to the government's summary of that sitting. The Ministry's release of the same day said it was also considering "an introduction of a modest fee" for advertising on the jobs portal run by Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman (WORC), and that government would itself publish "a weekly list of consolidated job vacancies in a local newspaper". Six weeks on, the Ministry has published no figure for what the newspaper notice costs employers, what the portal fee will be or how the newspaper will be chosen. The figures that are on the public record, set out below, show the notice to be the smallest charge on a work permit, and the largest to be the government's own.

What the Notice Costs

Section 58(2)(b)(ii) of the Caymanian Protection Act, in force since 1 May, requires an employer to have advertised a vacancy "in a local newspaper or other prescribed media" for 21 days before applying. No media have been prescribed under that provision, the Ministry confirmed to TCJ on 17 September, and WORC's policy requires one insertion a week for three weeks. The Act was amended to that wording by legislation his ministry brought to Parliament in December 2025.

At the published rates of the three titles that carry the notices, the smallest module each sells for a job advertisement costs CI$45, CI$58 and CI$75 an insertion, according to rate cards TCJ read on 18 September. That is CI$135, CI$174 or CI$225 for the three weeks, CI$178 on average, and the employer chooses which title to pay. TCJ does not yet sell these notices and has no rate in the comparison; it intends to sell them, which would make it the fourth competitor.

The government's charges are of a different order. It collected CI$138.9 million in work permit and residency fees in 2024 against 36,602 work permits, according to the Economics and Statistics Office's Annual Economic Report, or about CI$3,800 a permit. The Caymanian Protection (Fees) Regulations, 2026, which took effect on 1 May, add an application fee of CI$250 at that band. On those figures the average employer pays about CI$4,050 to the government and CI$178 to a newspaper. The notice is about 4% of the combined cost, the smallest charge on the permit, and the largest is the government's own. The Treasury line includes residency fees, so the average permit fee is overstated and the notice's share understated. A cut of under 5% in the average permit fee would save the average employer as much as abolishing the notice.

Those figures also omit training. Regulation 6 of the Caymanian Protection Regulations lets WORC require a permit applicant to show a programme for training Caymanians, and makes its absence "a ground for denying the grant or renewal of a work permit". An employer that meets such a condition by buying a course pays for that too. Inspire Cayman Training, a company Mr Myles MP owns, prices its courses at CI$3,500 to CI$5,350, according to a written quotation it sent a prospective employer on 2 November, seen by TCJ. For an employer that takes that route, the bill rises from about CI$4,228 to between CI$7,728 and CI$9,578, an increase of 83% to 127%, and the notice falls to about 2% of the total. The course alone costs 20 to 30 times the notice, and at the upper price it exceeds the government's own charge.

Mr Myles MP addressed his interest in a statement on 5 November. He said he disclosed his ownership of Inspire before the election and told the Premier and the then Deputy Governor of it on 2 May 2025, that management had passed to his daughter as Managing Director, and that responsibility for procuring training services moved to the Ministry of Education and Training on 1 July 2025. "Since becoming Minister, no government business involving Inspire has come before me for consideration or decision," he said, and employers "are free to choose whichever vocational provider suits them". TCJ sent questions to Inspire on 9 November and had received no reply by the time of publication.

The training conditions also pull against the government's own account of the labour market. The Economics and Statistics Office put unemployment at 2.6% in December 2025 and Caymanian unemployment at 4.1%, down from 4.6% a year earlier, and the Premier has spoken of "our strong economy". Yet the Ministry backs strict enforcement of the conditions attached to Business Staffing Plans, scholarship, apprenticeship and succession-planning conditions among them: Mr Myles MP said in June 2025 that "the Ministry fully supports the Board's zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance". A government reporting near-full employment is raising the cost of hiring in order to raise employment. Its answer is on the record too. The ESO's Labour Market Review counted 1,645 Caymanians in 2025 who were not working and wanted to, and found Caymanian unemployment shifting from short-term to long-term.

The average conceals the range. The notice is a flat charge and the fee scale is steep, so its weight falls hardest on the smallest employers. Under the Schedule to the Fees Regulations, the government charges CI$525 for an office cleaner's permit in Grand Cayman, an annual fee of CI$375 and a CI$150 application fee; the notice adds about a third to that. For an equity partner in a law firm the government charges CI$32,900, and the notice adds about half of 1%. That is the strongest version of the cost complaint, and it points to a remedy aimed at the lowest fee bands.

The government's own fee decisions have run the other way. The 2026 and 2027 budget listed new immigration revenue measures estimated to raise CI$15.4 million in 2026 and CI$17.1 million in 2027, among them "Increased Work Permit-related Fees", according to the government's release of 25 November 2025. Mr Myles MP told Parliament on 1 May that "Work permit fees have not increased" and that "administrative fees have been modernised responsibly after 15 years of remaining status quo", according to the government's summary of that sitting. On either description, the government has not proposed a reduction in its own charges as the answer to employers' complaint about cost.

A Question From December

Cost was put to the Minister before he cited it. The Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Hew MP, asked in the House on 10 December 2025 how small businesses and families employing domestic help would absorb the cumulative weight of the minimum wage, licence fees and permit costs. TCJ asked him this week whether he was ever given a figure. "No, the Minister did not provide me directly with a specific figure, nor am I aware of the Ministry having provided one subsequently," Mr Hew MP said in written answers supplied by his office on 11 November.

The Ministry's account of its own consultation does record the complaint. Its release of 12 October on stakeholder meetings held in September and October said participants raised "costs to smaller businesses". The research on which the Minister said the decision rested has not been published, and neither the Ministry nor WORC has published a count of Caymanians hired through a newspaper notice since 1 May.

What Replaces It

Under the proposal the employer stops paying a newspaper of its choice and may start paying the government. The fee for registering a vacancy on WORC's portal is already provided for in section 58(2)(b)(i) of the Act and is set by the Fees Regulations, where item 14.5 of the Schedule reads "Nil". Posting is free today, and a charge requires only an amendment to that entry. The release describes the proposed fee as modest and says its revenue would support the operation of the portal. It does not say what the fee will be, whether it will be capped or who will review it.

The arithmetic is simple. WORC took 19,627 permit decisions between January and August, according to figures the Ministry supplied to TCJ on 16 September, a rate of about 29,400 a year. If each required a posting, every CI$10 of fee would raise about CI$294,000 a year. Employers would pay less than they do now only if the fee is set below the CI$135 to CI$225 that three weeks of notices cost them.

The Opposition's position is that a fee paid to government is not relief. "A fee paid to Government is still a cost to the employer, irrespective of whether Government describes it as an administrative charge or a contribution towards operating the portal," Mr Hew MP said. The Opposition's "starting position would be that access to the national employment portal should be available without an additional advertising charge, particularly where employers are already paying substantial immigration application and permit fees". If the government believes a fee is necessary, he said, "it should first publish the operating costs of the portal, the expected revenue from the proposed charge and an explanation of why those costs cannot be met from existing immigration revenues".

The proposal also changes who chooses the newspaper. Under the rule, three titles compete for each employer's notice and no minister has a say in which is paid. Under the proposal as released, the government would buy a single weekly list in "a local newspaper", on criteria and for a term it has not published.

If cost is the concern, narrower remedies were available. The fee schedule already tiers the government's charges by occupation; the advertising duty could have been tiered the same way, with the lowest fee bands exempted, or reduced from three insertions to one. Online titles could have been prescribed alongside print under the words "other prescribed media", which could have widened employers' choice and lowered the price; eCayHire, operated by TCJ's affiliate, would be among the candidates. Asked whether the Opposition would have supported a tiered or exempted duty for individual employers and low-band permits instead of full removal, Mr Hew MP answered "Yes". The remedy proposed is the only one that moves both the charge and the choice of newspaper to the government.

The Jobseeker Now Pays Too

The Minister's release says the change will still ensure "Caymanians have a fair opportunity to see and apply for available jobs", and that WORC "will continue to support job seekers who may need assistance accessing vacancies online, including through in-person support with visits to the districts". A printed paper picked up free costs the reader nothing. The portal requires a device and a data plan, and Cayman's mobile data is among the dearest in the world. Cable.co.uk's worldwide survey, whose most recent edition is for 2023, put the average price of a gigabyte in Cayman at CI$6.99 (US$8.39), the tenth most expensive of 237 countries. At the minimum wage of CI$8.75 an hour, a gigabyte costs 48 minutes of work. No estimate of what the portal costs a jobseeker to use has been published.

The Case for the Change

There is a case for the Minister, and employers have made it. Chamber of Commerce members "raised concerns about the additional cost associated with the requirement to advertise work-permit vacancies in a local newspaper, in addition to posting vacancies on the WORC Jobs Portal", its chief executive, Wil Pineau, told TCJ in a written response on 4 October. "The cost of an individual advertisement may not appear significant when considered in isolation," he said, "but the cumulative cost can become material for businesses that recruit regularly or have multiple vacancies." He called the proposed removal "a positive example of Government responding to concerns raised by the business community".

There is a harder argument too, and it applies to this newspaper's affiliate. A law that obliges every employer to buy a notice creates a captive market for publishers, and a government that ends it is withdrawing a subsidy. One title moved to three editions a week and another began printing while the rule was in force, and TCJ printed its first edition on 9 October. The Opposition does not dismiss the saving. Mr Hew MP said "any measure that genuinely reduces the financial burden on employers, particularly small businesses and families employing domestic help, is worth considering", while he "would certainly not support any increase in costs that places an additional burden on employers".

The Chamber's support stops at the portal fee. The Chamber "was not formally consulted specifically on the final proposal", Mr Pineau said. It "would want to understand the proposed amount, how it would be structured and the rationale for the charge before taking a definitive position", and would encourage the government to ensure that any fee "does not simply replace one unnecessary recruitment cost with another". The body that asked for the notice to go has not agreed to what is proposed in its place.

What Has Been Asked

TCJ emailed the Ministry 14 questions on 2 October, covering the research the Minister cited, who was consulted, the portal fee, how the newspaper carrying the weekly list would be chosen and what analysis was made of jobseekers' access. The Ministry acknowledged them that day and said responses of that scope "require several steps, including drafting, confirmation of data and figures, input from the relevant departments and senior-level review and approval". TCJ sent further questions on 9 November, a public holiday. No answers had been received by the time of publication, and any reply will be published in full.

Until Parliament changes the law, section 58(2)(b)(ii) continues to require a newspaper advertisement. Three documents would settle most of the questions above: the research the Minister cited, the costing of the portal fee, and an estimate of what the change costs Caymanian jobseekers. None has been published, and the Opposition has now called for the second.