During 2022 the labor market in Colombia recovered, and the national unemployment rate was 11.2% for the entire year. However, the panorama in the different regions is not homogeneous and some concentrate more workers than others.
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The Dane delivered the results of the labor market for the second semester of 2022 and, according to the entity, the regions Orinoquía, Amazonía and Insular, in which the departments of Arauca, Casanare, Putumayo, Amazonas, Guainía, Guaviare, Vaupés, Vichada and San Andrés are located, have the highest unemployment rate, with an indicator of 14.5% for the three areas of the country.
Dane presents the figures for the three regions jointly and, according to official statistics, in the second half of 2022 there were 203,000 workers in these departments, which implies the recovery of 24,000 jobs compared to the records of the second half of 2021.
The unemployment figure is 35,000 citizens in these regionswhile 103,000 people are counted out of the labor force.
In the rest of the regions the unemployment rate is more uniform. In the Caribbean it was 10.9%, in the Pacific region 10.3%, in the Central region 10.1%while both the Eastern region and Bogotá registered an indicator of 10.0% during the second half of last year.
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The region with the largest number of workers in the second half of 2022 was the Central, made up of the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío, Tolima, Huila, Caquetá and Antioquia. There, 5.3 million jobs were concentrated in the second half of 2022, while 603,000 people were looking for a job. In addition, the Dane registered 3.8 million citizens outside the labor force in these seven departments.
LThe second region with the most workers was the Caribbean, with 4.8 million employed. This represented an improvement of 159,000 jobs compared to the data for the period July-December 2021. On the unemployment side, in the region there were 480,000 people looking for work, while 2.8 million were outside the labor market in the reference period.
This region groups the departments of Atlántico, Bolívar, Cesar, Córdoba, Sucre, Magdalena, and La Guajira.
In the case of the Eastern region, made up of Norte de Santander, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Meta according to the Dane criteria, the number of employed in the last six months of 2022 it stood at 4.3 million, 317,000 more in relation to the same period of the previous year.
There the number of unemployed was 480,000 people, while the population outside the labor force amounts to 2.8 million inhabitants.
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Bogotá is listed as an independent region in administrative records. 3.8 million citizens worked in the capital in the second half of last year, which evidenced the recovery of 199,000 jobs in one year, since between July and December 2021 the number of workers amounted to 3.6 million.
In the case of the unemployed, there were 427,000 in the city in the analysis period, while the population outside the labor force was made up of 2.1 million.
Finally, there is the Pacific (Chocó, Cauca, Nariño, Valle) with an employed population of 3.75 million people, 301,000 more than in the period July-December 2021. In this region, the number of unemployed in the second half of last year amounted to 430,000, while that of the population outside the labor force totaled 2.19 million.
LAURA LUCIA BECERRA ELEJALDE
Portfolio Journalist
