The labor market continues to show signs of recovery, and the figures provided by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane) for January 2022 show how, at the beginning of the year, 1.58 million jobs were recovered compared to the same month in 2021.
(Read: The activities that led the recovery of employment in January).
This, since the employed population for the first month of 2022 reached 20.69 million citizenswhile for January 2021 the number of workers at the national level was 19.11 million people.
“Practically this year, almost all the jobs that we had seen as lost between January 2020 and January 2021 were recovered”, highlighted the director of Dane, Juan Daniel Oviedo, because in the data for the labor market in January 2021 a drop of 1.57 million jobs had been established in the national total.
It is worth mentioning that the Dane made a update in the statistical base of the Great Integrated Household Survey (Geih), from which labor market data is obtained, and incorporated 2018 as the base year, when the last national population and housing census was carried out, for which it also adjusted the figures from the previous year for comparison.
Now, of the total number of jobs that recovered, 823,000 occurred in the main 13 cities and metropolitan areas of the country, which represents about 52% of the total.
Regarding the unemployment rate, for January 2022 it was 14.6% and compared to the same month of the year 2021 (17.5%) it had a reduction of 2.9 percentage points. Thus, while in the first month of last year there were 4.06 million Colombians without work, in January of this year the figure showed a decrease to 3.55 million, a difference of 513,000 jobs.
(What’s more: Creation of companies still does not reach the levels of 2019).
Of that total, 452,000 recovered in large cities, where 1.7 million unemployed people are also concentrated. The urban unemployment rate was 14.8%.
In that year, almost all of the jobs lost between January 2020 and January 2021 were recovered
El Dane also revealed that in the first month of the year 14.5 million people were out of the labor force. Of these, 2.35 million said they were studying, 8.75 million said they were engaged in household chores (and of these 7.5 million were women), and 3.4 million said they were engaged in another activity, among which the Dane includes categories such as permanently unable to work, annuitant, pensioner or retiree and people who do not call their attention or believe that it is not worth working.
By sectors, trade and repair of vehicles was the one that contributed the most to job creation in January, with 348,000 new jobs. This sector employs 3.9 million people in the country. It was followed by professional, scientific, technical and administrative service activities, with 262,000 jobs, and manufacturing industries, with 232,000 new jobs.
For Sergio Olarte, chief economist at Scotiabank Colpatria, the January employment figures are “good news”, as they are related to activities that have to do with face-to-face activities, such as commerce, education and manufacturing.
(Read: Unemployment rate in Colombia stood at 14.6% in January 2022).
“We still have a little way to go in terms of employability, but this is definitely good news and reinforces that the year started well both in terms of economic activity and in terms of lower unemployment. We continue to think that unemployment this year on average is going to drop a little, approaching 12%.Olarte said.
GENDER GAP
Of the 1.58 million jobs that were recovered in January, 913,000 were occupied by womenand although the female unemployment rate fell to 19.4%, from 21.4% in January 2021, the gender gap increased.
In men, unemployment stood at 11.2%, while a year ago it was 14.5%. So the gender gap was 8.2 percentage pointss (pps), while in 2021 it was 6.2 pps.
The director of AmCham Colombia, María Claudia Lacouture, assured that “Although new jobs are created, female hiring does not advance at the same rate”, and emphasized that it is necessary to “balance the disadvantages for women who, in addition to being more marginalized in terms of access to jobs and subsisting in the informal sector, tend to have lower pay and more obligations at home”.
LAURA LUCIA BECERRA ELEJALDE
