ILO: More than 46% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lives informally

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that, at least, 46% of the economically active population (EAP) of Latin America and the Caribbean has informal employment.

During a meeting of the organization in Costa Rica, the deputy regional director for the region, Claudia Coenjaerts, explained that governments must prioritize the fight against informality, unemployment and low productivity, through related strategies.

“Self-employment, which often represents low-quality employment, not always, but in most cases, represents 28% of total employment in the region

This is because the ILO presumes that, at the end of 2022, more than 20 million people in the region were unemployed, out of a total of 282 million citizens. The number of informal jobs reaches more than 130 million people.

Coenjaerts indicated that this growth in informality “is very dangerous”, especially for low-income families, since they do not have the possibility of accessing another type of livelihood, which is perpetuated in a systemic way.

Likewise, ILO revealed that 32.2% of the 600 million inhabitants of the region survive below the poverty line, which in turn reaches some 200 million people.

“What we are finding now is that it is an element that comes after the pandemic and with all the crisis that we have in the world with high inflation and everything, that we also have the phenomenon of the poor worker that can also be in the sector formal,” he said.

Finally, Coenjaerts assured that the recovery of employment after the pandemic has been fundamentally oriented towards informality, which “is not good news, since we know that it is one of the main problems for the region.”

The data

The average regional unemployment rate for 2022 was significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels: 7.2% in 2022 compared to 8% in 2019.