In agriculture, cleaning or management? In 2022, around 1,649,000 Uruguayans were employed in the different classes of jobs, which reflects an occupancy rate of 57.7%. According to the latest data published on the labor market in the country —corresponding to April 2023— that percentage was close to 57.5%).
What tasks did you work on during the last closed year? Of the total number of employed Uruguayans, most (25%) are jobs that require higher qualifications. This means that 412 thousand positions They are linked to professionals with secondary education who carry out specialized tasks, technicians, administrators, managers, directors, scientists.
At the same time, 289 thousand Uruguayans kept their jobs within the classification of elementary occupations. This figure indicated that 17.5% of Uruguayans were employed as waste managers, in domestic service or as cadets or food distributors.
What does it mean for a job to be more or less qualified? According to the economist of the Center for Development Studies (CED), Ignacio Umpiérrez, three variables are considered when analyzing the degree of qualification. These are the education level required to fill the position, the skills what the job demands and what level of cognitive development is needed to perform the associated tasks.
On the other hand, in the average qualification levels were located —among other categories— service workers and salespeople (21.6%), which reached 356 thousand last year.
a little further back, with 327 jobs, operators, officials and operators (19.8%) were positioned.
Agricultural workers, in their different forms, reached 194 thousand (11.8%).
In last place, by quantity, was the personnel that provided administrative support with 71 thousand positions, which meant 4.3% in the general composition of employment by general occupation; These data come from a study prepared by the CED based on data from the Continuous Household Survey (ECH).
| Year | 2015 | 2019 | 2022 |
| Higher Skilled Occupations | 349 | 367 | 412 |
| agricultural workers | 194 | 183 | 194 |
| Service workers and commerce vendors | 363 | 363 | 356 |
| Administrative support staff | 74 | 74 | 71 |
| Operators, officers and operators | 355 | 333 | 327 |
| elementary occupations | 305 | 297 | 289 |
The evolution
Once the covid-19 pandemic has been overcome, the trend that has been gaining momentum in the national labor market is that companies have demanded more positions with a higher qualification to the detriment of those that require a lower level of qualification.
If we compare the composition of the jobs corresponding to 2019 —pre-pandemic— with those of last year, an increase of 45 thousand positions is observed in those that require higher qualification, while those with the lowest qualification fell by 8 thousand positions.
One of the factors that explains this behavior is that “the informality has been going down,” Umpiérrez specified in dialogue with Coffee & Business.
