The “employment crisis” generated by the covid-19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean threatens to last until 2023 or even 2024, the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned on Tuesday.
“The employment outlook is uncertain, the persistence of infections due to the pandemic and the prospect of mediocre economic growth this year could prolong”declared the ILO director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Vinicius Pinheiro, when presenting an annual report.
“An employment crisis that is too long is worrying because it generates discouragement and frustration, which in turn affects social stability and governance”, added the head of the ILO, which has its regional headquarters in Lima.
Despite the economic rebound in 2021, the year in which the region grew by over 6%, not all the jobs lost with the pandemic were recoveredsaid the ILO.
Of the 49 million jobs lost at the worst moment of the pandemic crisis, in the second quarter of 2020, some 4.5 million still need to be recovered.
“At the beginning of 2022, it is estimated that in total there are some 28 million people looking for a job without finding it”says the ILO regional report.
“Nearly 4 million correspond to people who have joined the ranks of unemployment due to the pandemic crisis,” he adds.
The regional unemployment rate of 9.6% at the end of 2021”represents an improvement from the 10.6% that it reached in 2020, but a setback compared to the 8% that was registered for the year 2019which in this case is used as a reference to calculate the impact of two years of the pandemic,” said the UN body.
“Social comorbidities”
The ILO said that the growth forecast in Latin America of just over 2% this year “is a clear indication that it will take longer for the region to emerge from the covid-19 crisis.”
He added that unemployment could fall this year between 0.2 or 0.3 percentage points, remaining above 9%which “would be insufficient to return” to the situation of 2019, a year in which “the labor market situation was far from positive”.
“In Latin America and the Caribbean, the pandemic had a more severe impact due to ‘social comorbidities’ such as informality and inequality”Pinheiro explained.
Along the same lines, ECLAC said last Thursday that five million Latin Americans fell into extreme poverty in 2021, with which the total number of people living in this condition rose to 86 million.
Work, family unity and health, among the wishes for this 2022 of travelers who filled Playas
The increase in extreme poverty, which went from 13.1% to 13.8% of the population in the region, is due to “the deepening of the social and health crisis derived from the pandemic,” indicated the Economic Commission for America America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), another UN entity based in Santiago.
Women
The ILO highlighted that the unemployment rate for women has remained at 12.4% since 2020 in the region, which means that it did not experience any improvement in 2021 and contributes to amplifying gender inequality at work.
“Without a set of coherent measures to generate jobs, the impacts of the crisis will be prolonged and will leave deep social and labor scars” in the region, said Roxana Maurizio, a specialist in labor economics, who presented the report together with Pinheiro. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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