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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

ILO warns of increased unemployment

by

20151213

In 2015, the un­em­ploy­ment rate in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in­creased for the first time in five years to 6.7 per cent, caus­ing at least 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple to join the ranks of the un­em­ployed, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO)'s an­nu­al re­port, in which the im­pact of the slow­down on eco­nom­ic growth in the labour mar­ket is record­ed.

The 2015 Labour Overview of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean warned of a "turn­around" in the em­ploy­ment in­di­ca­tors, with a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion of women and youth, and in­di­ca­tions of ris­ing in­for­mal­i­ty through "in­creased gen­er­a­tion of low­er qual­i­ty jobs."

"The cu­mu­la­tive ef­fects of the eco­nom­ic down­turn that be­gan three or four years ago and deep­ened dur­ing 2015, can be de­scribed as a cri­sis in slow mo­tion," said ILO re­gion­al di­rec­tor, Jose Manuel Salazar. "This sit­u­a­tion is wor­ry­ing and pos­es nu­mer­ous pol­i­cy chal­lenges for the coun­tries in the re­gion."

Be­cause of slow growth fore­casts for the re­gion re­main in the com­ing years, the ILO es­ti­mat­ed that in 2016 the av­er­age un­em­ploy­ment rate for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean could in­crease fur­ther to 6.9 per cent.

Salazar said that in 2015, sim­i­lar to the eco­nom­ic slow­down, the re­duced em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion has been seen at dif­fer­ent rates across the coun­tries in the re­gion. In some coun­tries the un­em­ploy­ment rate has even re­duced. But at the re­gion­al lev­el there are coun­tries such as Brazil, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to an in­crease in the av­er­age rate.

Thus, the main rise in un­em­ploy­ment oc­curred in South Amer­i­ca where it in­creased from 6.8 per cent to 7.6 per cent, and the Caribbean in­creased from 8.2 per cent to 8.5 per cent. How­ev­er, a fall was record­ed in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Mex­i­co, from 5.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent.

"The av­er­age un­em­ploy­ment rate for the re­gion rose from 6.2 per cent in 2014 to 6.7 per cent in 2015. From this we es­ti­mate that re­gion­al­ly, un­em­ploy­ment in­creased by 1.7 mil­lion and there­fore "the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple af­fect­ed by a lack of jobs in Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean is around 19 mil­lion," said Salazar.

He al­so com­ment­ed on the qual­i­ty of jobs. There are in­di­ca­tions of a slow­down in wage growth and a re­duc­tion in the gen­er­a­tion of wage and salaried work, with an in­crease in self-em­ploy­ment, which can be as­so­ci­at­ed with poor work­ing con­di­tions.

"These are signs that there may be in­creas­ing in­for­mal­i­ty, which ac­cord­ing to the lat­est avail­able da­ta has reached 130 mil­lion work­ers," Salazar added.

More than half of those new­ly un­em­ployed are women. The un­em­ploy­ment rate of women has in­creased from 7.7 per cent in 2014 to 8.2 per cent in 2015, ac­cord­ing to the ILO's Labour Overview, equiv­a­lent to 1.4 times the rate of men.

The re­gion­al re­port ex­plains that the rate of labour par­tic­i­pa­tion of women re­sumed an up­ward trend, but the em­ploy­ment rate was more mod­er­ate. "The un­em­ploy­ment rate can be at­trib­uted to the greater in­flux of women in­to the labour mar­ket," says the doc­u­ment.

Youth un­em­ploy­ment al­so in­creased, fol­low­ing sev­er­al years of a de­creas­ing rate, mean­ing that "the trend has changed" for this group as well. As is the case with the gen­er­al em­ploy­ment rate, the youth un­em­ploy­ment rate var­ied be­tween coun­tries and an im­prove­ment has been ob­served in about half of the coun­tries in the re­gion.

The av­er­age for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean saw a rise from 14.5 per cent to 15.3 per cent. "Un­less poli­cies are put in place to boost the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of youth em­ploy­ment, the emerg­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion could fur­ther ag­gra­vate this sit­u­a­tion," warns the re­port.


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