The recovery of the labor market in the last part of 2021 lost some strength, despite the fact that the employment figures continue to improve. The year closed with an unemployment rate of 11% for the month of December, and 13.7% for the total of 2021. And part of that tailwind was also seen in the informality figures.
(Informality fell to 46.8% in the 13 main capitals).
The Dane reported this Friday that the proportion of informal workers closed at 48% in the October-December 2021 quarter. This meant a reduction of 1.2 percentage points (pps) compared to the figure for the same period in 2020 (49.2 %) and 0.2 pps in relation to the moving quarter of September-November 2021.
With these figures, of 11.63 million workers in the country, 6.04 million worked in formal jobs in the last quarter of the year, while 5.58 million Colombians were able to work, but with informal employment.
This trend also occurred in the 13 main cities and metropolitan areas of the country. The statistical entity reported that the proportion of informal workers was 46.8% for the October-December 2021 quarter. This implies a reduction of 1.3 pps compared to the informality rate for the same period in 2020 (48.1%), and 0.1 pps compared to the immediately previous moving quarter (Sep-Nov 2021).
(53% of jobs recovered from May to July are informal).
This corresponds to Bogotá, Medellín and the Aburrá Valley, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales, Pasto, Pereira, Cúcuta, Ibagué, Montería, Cartagena and Villavicencio. These cities concentrate 90% of the country’s workers, 10.48 million workers, and of these, 4.9 million are informal.
For the analysis period, Dane announced that those with the highest proportion of informality were: Cúcuta and its metropolitan area (70.3%), Sincelejo (66.7%) and Santa Marta (65.4%), while the cities with the lowest proportion of informality were: Manizales (33.3%), Pereira and its metropolitan area (40.3%) and Medellín (40.9%).
In a recent report published by the economic studies center Anif, and by Bancolombia, it is highlighted how the end of the year brought positive news in terms of employment.
“We observed that in the month of December there was a greater increase in private employment (mostly formal) than self-employment (mostly informal) when compared to the same month of the previous year, which is a very positive aspect to continue reducing the lag that still exists compared to the pre-pandemic situation”, the document stated.
Although the advances are positive, there is still a gap between men and women. During the October – December 2021 quarter, in the 13 cities and metropolitan areas, the proportion of employed men who were informal was 45.8%, which meant a decrease of 1.9 percentage points compared to the same period last year (47 .7%).
For women, the proportion was 48%, compared to a figure of 48.5% for the same period in 2020, which meant a reduction of only 0.5 pps for them. Between men and women there is a gap of 2.2 pps.
YOUTH MARKET
Another labor market report delivered yesterday by Dane was the Youth Labor Market, which measures the situation of young people between 14 and 28 years old. According to Dane figures, in this age group there are 5.56 million young people working, while the number of unemployed amounts to 1.22 million people.
The unemployment rate of the young population stood at 18.1%, registering a decrease of -3.5 pps compared to the October-December 2020 quarter (21.6%). For women, this rate stood at 23.7%, and achieved a decrease of 6.1 pp compared to the October-December 2020 quarter (29.8%), in the case of men, unemployment was 13.9%, decreasing 1.5 pps compared to the same period of the previous year (15.4%).
In the October-December 2021 quarter, the branch of activity that concentrated the highest number of employed young people was Commerce and vehicle repair (20.9%), followed by Agriculture (17.8%) and Manufacturing industries (11.3%). ).
BRIEFCASE
