RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The labor market recovery in Greater Santiago continues. According to the Survey of Employed and Unemployed (EOD) of the Microdata Center of the University of Chile, in December, the employment rate, which measures the number of people working over the total of those of working age, was 54.6%, which meant an increase of 1.9 points compared to September and of 2.8 pp in twelve months.
The 3,211,000 employed persons registered between November 28 and December 4 implied the creation of 120.9 thousand jobs in the quarter and 207.1 thousand in comparison with the same period in 2020.
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According to estimates by the director of Microdatos, Lorena Flores, there are still about 200 thousand jobs to be recovered, considering the increase in the working-age population.
At the same time, labor participation also recovered. The labor force, which groups the employed and unemployed, grew 3.2% in twelve months and 4.5% in the quarter, totaling 3.5 million people.
Thus, there was a decrease in the number of inactive persons, which put a little more pressure on the unemployment rate in the quarter, which went from 7.8% in September to 8.3%.
In twelve months, the number of inactive persons decreased by 5.1% in the quarter and by 0.9%. Unemployed persons increased by 11% in the quarter, while in the opposite direction, they decreased by 25.5% in the year.
This picture, in Flores’ opinion, reflects that in general there are “good figures”, which complement the higher number of employed persons since the beginning of the pandemic: “what we observed in December is that the number of inactive persons decreased, the number of employed persons increased and there are few who are remaining unemployed”.
By gender, the unemployment rate, which measures the number of people looking for work without finding it out of the total labor force, is higher in men (8.6%) than in women (8%).