He Dominican labor market reached the 5,168,878 workers between October and December 2025, for an interannual increase of 2.3% – equivalent to 117,948 new employees – compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 – in which 5,050,930 were registered workers–, according to statistics from the Dominican Central Bank (BCRD).
Of these new employees, 72.7% (85,764) correspond to formal workerswhile the informal ones represented the remaining 27.3% (32,184), which placed the informality at 54.2% in that period, 0.6 percentage points less than the 54.8% registered between October and December 2024.
With these results, the Dominican economy registered an increase of 133,915 net workers on average throughout last year when compared to the average of the four quarters of 2024.
“The occupation in the Dominican economy has shown a sustained growthmainly explained by the increase in formal workers in recent years, that is, employees who have access to social security benefits via their occupation and independent workers whose production unit has a National Taxpayer Registry (RNC), regardless of the economic activity they carry out,” the monetary entity stated.
In fact, the formally employed represented 98.5% (131,901) of the net new employees. In this way, the rate of informality In the Dominican Republic it stood at an average of 54.1%, 1.4 percentage points lower than the 55.5% in 2024.
The occupancy rate (TO) averaged 62.9%, while the overall participation rate (TGP) averaged 66.2%, both reaching “the highest historical value in their respective annual series”, according to the monetary entity, reflecting a high employment and relative participation in the labor market in the context of the region.
Unemployment and inactive population
Regarding the rate of open unemployment (SU1), defined as the percentage of unemployed people who are actively looking for work as a proportion of the labor force, stood at 5.0% in October-December 2025, for a variation of 0.2 percentage points compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
The average of the open unemployment rate in 2025 It was also 5.0%, for a reduction of 0.1% compared to 2024.
The rate of underutilization of the workforce (SU3), indicator equivalent to the old rate of expanded unemploymentwhich includes both the openly unemployed (actively looking for work) and people who would be willing to work if offered a job, stood at 9.2% in October-December 2025.
This is a decrease of 0.2 percentage points with respect to October-December 2024.
While the inactive population It stood at 2,786,496 people in the fourth quarter of 2025, for an inactivity rate of 33.9%, lower by 0.7 percentage points compared to the 34.6% registered in the October-December quarter of 2024.
The inactive population It is made up of those of working age who are not employed or actively looking for work, such as those with family responsibilities or household chores, students and people with permanent or temporary health conditions.
Evolution of the informality
When analyzing the behavior of the informality ratethe Central Bank indicates that the result of 54.2% in October-December 2025 was 4.7 percentage points lower than the historical maximum of 58.9% experienced during the covid-19 pandemic and 0.6 percentage points below the level of 54.8% observed in October-December 2024.
The data locates the rate of Dominican informality is located slightly above the median in Latin America and the Caribbean (47%), where those employed outside of formality continue to be one of the most persistent challenges of the labor market of the region.
Despite maintaining a downward path since 2021, they still persist structural factors that make the informality affects almost half of the employed people in the region, with significant differences between the 12 countries with methodologically comparable statistics.
In this sense, in countries like Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador the informality It is found at 70% or more and in others such as Uruguay and Chile The rates are less than 30%, highlights the BCRD in a press release.
According to the institution, the generation of new net employees, the main source of current household income, has contributed to improving the well-being of the population through an increase in labor income, combined with social programs.
This has been reflected in an increase in the purchasing power of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, “allowing more and more Dominicans to overcome the threshold of monetary poverty.”
In this way, the Central Bank registers a favorable performance of the formal labor market, with an employment rate close to its maximum level and employment indicators around “historic lows” since the beginning of the National Continuous Labor Force Survey (ENCFT) in 2014.
