The major new development in Friday's Budget Statement was Government's decision to launch an unemployment insurance scheme.

Predictably, this was welcomed by trade unions but received a more muted response from employers.

Details of the scheme are far from clear yet, but as an insurance scheme, it would appear that only people who have been previously employed and have contributed to the scheme will be entitled to benefits.

What has yet to be decided is how long a person will have worked to be eligible, and whether all people who leave work and have not yet found employment will be eligible.

Will someone who resigns of their own free will but has not found another job be eligible? Will people who have been made redundant and have received redundancy payments be able to receiver a further benefit from the scheme? Will people who have been dismissed from their jobs for performance or conduct causes be eligible?

Nor is it clear who will contribute. Will employers be required to contribute as well as employees? If so, it begs the question of whether the money being put to the scheme could be better used keeping people in jobs in the first place.

All of these questions need to be answered by the Government, which proposes to do so in a White Paper promised for this summer.

The broader question is whether such a scheme is needed at all.

Mr. Cox described the scheme as an addition to the social security safety net, which already features financial assistance and housing assistance for those who need it.

To some extent, unemployment insurance covers some of the same ground for those who find themselves out of work for a sustained period of time.

One of the solid arguments in favour of unemployment insurance is that it would give the community a firm gauge of unemployment levels. The current system of unemployment registration is inaccurate because people have little incentive to register.

But assuming that unemployment is still reasonably low — and the recession does not yet appear to have caused serious job losses — this is an expensive way to get a statistic.

More importantly, if the Island's unemployment levels remain low, there seems to be little good reason for the scheme when anyone who wants a job can still get one.

Indeed, the major challenge for the Bermuda economy is not unemployment, but training and education, especially as the economy shifts from tourism to financial services.

There is a desperate need for Bermudians in fields from nursing to accounting to plumbing to qualified office staff, not to mention in middle and upper management. What is needed is real and sustained investment both in the schools and in further education, both at the Bermuda College and on the job. Even tourism, for all of its supposed problems, desperately needs Bermudians at all levels.

There are enormous opportunities for Bermudians who are prepared to either upgrade their skills for further advancement, or to change skills as they move from one sector of the economy to another.

Some of this training is already being done, but it is hard to ignore the feeling that the $1 million which is being used as seed money for unemployment insurance would be better used for training people who may well be facing a job loss to train and prepare for their next form of employment — where they are already needed.