In the country, six out of ten workers work in informal conditions. The figures from the latest ‘Informal Employment’ bulletin of the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane) showed that for the June-August 2022 quarter 58.1% of the employed in the country were in an informal situation.
(Informality for July-August had a reduction of 2.2 pp: it was 58.1%).
This implies that, during this period, of 22.07 million employed persons registered by the statistical authority, 9.24 million were formal, while 12.83 million worked informally.
It is worth mentioning, however, that compared to the figures recorded a year ago, there was an improvement in the indicator, since the proportion of informally employed persons fell 2.2 percentage points compared to 2021, when the rate was of 60.3%.
Likewise, progress is perceived in relation to the figures for both the female and male population. In the case of men, the informality rate was 60%, and showed a reduction of 2.8 percentage points; On the women’s side, the proportion of informality was 55.4%, a reduction of 0.9 percentage points compared to the 2021 figures.
(The scenarios with which the bid for the minimum wage starts).
In the case of the main urban areas of the country, the situation is the opposite, since the majority of workers do have formal conditions in their jobs. Of 10.35 million employed persons registered by Dane in the 13 main cities and metropolitan areas for the June-August 2022 quarter, 5.81 million were formal while 4.53 million worked in informal conditions.
This is equivalent to the fact that 43.8% of employed citizens were in an informal situation for the quarter in question. This indicator represented a decrease of 2.0 percentage points compared to the moving quarter June-August 2021 (45.8%).
According to Dane, for this period, the cities with the highest proportion of informality were Sincelejo (68.9%), Riohacha (68.5%) and Valledupar (67.5%), while the cities with the lowest rate of informality they were Manizales (34.8%), Bogotá DC (35.1%), and Medellín (39.9%).
The Dane also delivered the informality figures in the country in relation to the size of the companies, for the moving quarter June – August 2022 85.1% of the employed population that worked in micro-enterprises was informal. The situation in small companies, those between 10 and 50 employees, was that 21.9% of the workers were informal.
This proportion is reduced in the case of medium-sized companies, where 10.3% of workers were in the informal sector for the reference quarter, and the situation in large companies showed an indicator of 7.2%.
While in medium-sized and large firms the informality situation of workers decreased (1.9 and 1.8 percentage points, respectively), in small firms the rate increased 1.7 percentage points, and in micro-firms only reduced by 0.1 points.
(Risks of terminating contracts for the provision of services, according to Fenalco).
youth employment
The Dane also delivered the youth labor market report, the one that measures employment conditions for the population between 15 and 28 years old. According to the Dane, this group registered an unemployment rate of 18.2%, which implied a decrease of 4.3 percentage points compared to the June-August 2021 quarter (22.5%).
According to Dane figures, within this age group there are 5.08 million employed youth, 1.13 million unemployed and 5.17 million people outside the labor market.
For this group, in the case of men, the youth unemployment rate for the quarter stood at 14.9%, and 3.06 million workers and 535,000 unemployed were registered. For women between 15 and 28 years old, the unemployment indicator for the quarter was 22.9%, with 2.01 million working women and 597,000 unemployed.
The Dane also highlighted that in the June-August 2022 quarter, the population of young people between 15 and 28 years old who were not studying or were not employed was 2.71 million people. This represented 23.9% of people of working age for that age range.
In the case of young men, those who neither study nor work are equivalent to 7.9% of the male population in that range, and for women the proportion was 16.0%.
According to the entity, for the quarter the branch of economic activity that employed the largest number of people in this age group was Trade and repair of vehicles (19.0%), with 963,000 young people, followed by agriculture, livestock, hunting and fishing, in which 744,000 young people work.
Laura Lucia Becerra Elejalde
BRIEFCASE
