First modification:
Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Brazil, among others, maintain an unemployment rate in the single digits, after having reached two during the pandemic. However, in several of these countries there are more informal than formal employees.
With unemployment rates returning to single-digit levels, a large part of Latin America’s economies could consider the employment crisis that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic over.
In Colombia, the unemployment rate closed October at 9.2%, one tenth less than in September, and far from the 13.7% with which 2023 began, according to the report presented this Thursday by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane).
Chile, for its part, marked a new and slight increase in its unemployment rate, which reached 8.9% during the August-October quarter, reported the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
In Brazil, 7.6% of the active population was unemployed in the moving quarter ended in October, three tenths less compared to the previous three months ended in July, according to the Government. And Mexico enjoys an apparently healthy unemployment rate of less than 3%.
However, they all share a common denominator: although the pandemic marked a before and after in the labor market, informality has remained almost intact when comparing the periods before and after the crisis.
One in every two workers is informal in Latin America
At the worst moment of the pandemic, Latin American labor markets went back at least ten years, with high unemployment rates, a worrying increase in inactivity and persistent decent work deficits, according to the International Labor Organization.
In 2020, the regional unemployment rate exceeded 10%, according to the organization, with more than 30 million people looking for work and unable to find it, not counting the 23 million women and men who became inactive and stopped working. search in the absence of opportunities.
At the end of 2022, unemployment had already fallen to 7.2% of the workforce. However, the regional informality rate is at 50%, the pre-pandemic level, although in some countries it is much higher.
In Colombia, the figures as of October 2023 show an informality of 55.2%; in Mexico it is 55.4% and in Brazil it reaches almost 40%.
With EFE and local media
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