ILO: 4.5 million jobs lost due to the pandemic need to be recovered in Latin America

The COVID-19 pandemic caused up to 49 million jobs to be lost in Latin America, and according to the International Labor Organization (ILO)Until the third quarter of 2021, 4.5 million jobs remain to be recovered.

Of this figure, 4.2 million correspond to jobs performed by women. It is important to point out that the gender gap in the labor aspect remains since the unemployment rate for females remains high at 12.4% since 2020, which does not reflect any improvement compared to 2021.

“The most intense impact among women in the region is associated with the greater presence of women in economic sectors strongly affected by the crisis, such as hotels and restaurants, and in other service activities and the household sector. On the other, to the higher incidence of informality among women”, the report states.

On the other hand, The international organization calculated that one of every two employed persons is informal and that the unemployment rate amounts to 9.6%.

Likewise, the expectations of employment growth for 2022 is 2% and it is still insufficient since they would not reach those that were presented in 2019, it must be taken into account that this scenario was not the most optimistic either due to the slow growth of the economy and low productivity in the region.

“The labor outlook is uncertain, the persistence of contagion from the pandemic and the prospect of mediocre economic growth this year could prolong the employment crisis until 2023 or even 2024,” said Vinícius Pinheiro, ILO director in the region.

Peruvian case

In Peru, informality contributes 75% to the recovery of employment from mid-2020 to the third quarter of 2021.

In addition, according to the ILO, our country had the highest peak of households without labor income during the second quarter of 2020 (35%). Already for the second quarter of 2021 the indicator touched 10%.