The economic reactivation of Latin America is not being sufficiently reflected in the labor markets, since it does not generate neither the quantity nor the quality of jobs that are required to face the aftermath of the socioeconomic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The job outlook is not encouraging and poses a challenge of great magnitude.
When the crisis raged in the region in the second quarter of 2020, around 43 million jobs were destroyed. Although a large number of jobs have been recovered since then, we are still far from returning to the levels we had before the pandemic.
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The weak recovery in employment meant that in the first half of 2021 the average unemployment rate in the region remained high, at 11 percent. In absolute terms, it means that around 32 million people are actively looking for work without finding it.
But in addition, around 70 percent of the jobs created in recent months in a group of Latin American countries are in informal conditions. This is a worrying fact because in many cases it involves low-income occupations, without social protection or rights.
Informality is an endemic problem in Latin America. Before the pandemic, on average 1 in 2 jobs was informal in the region. When the crisis hit, informal occupations were hit the hardest by job destruction and abrupt loss of income.
It is true that the virus does not discriminate in contagion, but in our fragmented societies access to social services, technological infrastructure and decent working conditions make a difference when the time comes to protect against the economic impacts of a crisis.
In fact, at the beginning of the long periods of confinement, teleworking and digitization contributed to business continuity and the preservation of millions of jobs. An estimated 23 million people transited to telework in the region. In some countries, about 30 percent of wage earners switched to teleworking.
However, this option was predominantly available to formal salaried workers, highly educated and with access to technologies and connectivity. At the same time, we all witnessed how informal activities in our cities exceeded sanitary measures to control the pandemic, since many people need to work one day to eat that day.
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Additionally, women, youth, migrants and people with lower qualifications have been disproportionately affected by the contraction of employment and income, and this means that they were affected more strongly by the inequalizing and poverty-increasing impacts of this crisis in the region.
In the case of women, there was a decline in labor force participation after decades during which there had been an increase in their incorporation into the workforce. It has been more than 15 years since there was such a low rate of economic participation for women.
This is also reflected in the job recovery data. From the second quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, 58 percent of the total female employment lost during the first half of 2020 was recovered in the region. In the case of male employment, this value rises to 77 percent.
Faced with such a complex scenario, it is time to make a call to action in favor of the generation of more and better jobs to get out of the crisis. As we are already verifying, the economic recovery alone is insufficient to generate more and better jobs.
In addition to underpinning growth, it is crucial that there are policies focused especially on the generation of formal jobs. There is a wide repertoire of measures at the disposal of governments to advance on this path, which should be supported by effective social dialogue with employers and workers.
On the other hand, it is important that these strategies point towards the future of the work we want. In the case of informality, it is important to go beyond the usual strategies, perhaps to rethink how to approach this problem with the use of new technologies and initiatives for e-formalization.
We cannot forget that employment is the main source of income for Latin American households and as such is essential to reduce poverty and inequality. And that is why it is also a key piece of social stability in the countries of the region.
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Contact:
Vinícius Pinheiro, ILO Director for Latin America and the Caribbean
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.