By Marco Aquino
LIMA (Reuters) – Unemployment in Latin America and the Caribbean likely fell in 2024, but the inequality gap continued to widen, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report on Tuesday.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Despite a reduction in unemployment, the persistent issue of job quality is a key contributor to the region’s inequality, with almost half of workers having precarious contracts, unstable incomes or economic vulnerability, according to the report.
KEY QUOTES
“The region has recovered pre-pandemic employment levels, but the outlook remains worrying: we are at the same point as 10 years ago,” Ana Virginia Moreira, Director of the ILO for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in the report.
“Economic growth is slowing down and structural deficiencies in job creation persist,” she added.
BY THE NUMBERS
According to ILO, regional unemployment closed at 6.1% in 2024, a slight decrease from 6.5% the previous year. The employment rate in the region, meanwhile, increased by 0.5 percentage points to 58.9% between 2023 and 2024.
The female employment rate stood at 52.1% in 2024, significantly lower than the male employment rate at 74.3%, and women earned on average 20% less than men.
Furthermore, informal labor remained high in the region, at 47.6%.
WHAT’S NEXT
The ILO estimates that the unemployment rate in 2025 will remain between 5.8% and 6.2%, amid moderate economic growth. The organization also urged leaders create policies to drive more robust job growth and emphasize labor formalization.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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