They cried out that critical man-hours were lost, and prominent businessman Ralph "Bizzy" Williams estimated a productivity loss to the nation of $4 million.

However, when the DAILY NATION tried to get a scientific estimate as to how much yesterday's early shutdown had cost the island, the answer was found not to be quite that easy to work out.

Anthony Sobers, chief economist with the Barbados National Productivity Council, said arriving at such a cost was "very complicated".

First, he said, instead of basing the cost on an hourly wage, it would be better to take the "average weighted compensation cost" and then divide that by the number of Barbadian workers.

Sobers explained the compensation cost not only included what the worker was paid, but also any perks, and national insurance, since all those were costs to employers. Then, he said, this would have to be weighted by pay scale.

He said Barbados' workforce numbered 126 000 and if it was estimated that every worker worked an eight-hour day, that would be just over one million work hours per day.

The economist then said that if five hours of the day were lost, this would be an approximate loss of 630 000 work hours.

However, Sobers pointed out that other factors would have to be brought in.

He said the number would change if one brought to bear the number of people who did not report to work at all, or those in the essential services who still had to put in a full workday or more.

Sobers also said the shutdown cost could be approached from a different angle by taking the value of Barbados' gross domestic product and dividing that by the number of days in the year in order to find out the island's output per day.

However, again, there were other factors involved in that calculation since some earnings might have still been gained despite the shutdown.