Unemployment rises in Chile to 8.4% between December and February last year

Unemployment in Chile rose to 8.4 percent in the mobile quarter between December 2022 and February 2023, the National Statistics Institute (INE) reported yesterday, Thursday.

The figure reported meant an increase of 0.4 percentage points compared to the previous mobile quarter and a rise of 0.9 percentage points in twelve months.

INE’s National Employment Survey (ENE) noted that this is the fourth annual increase after continuous decreases since the February-April 2021 quarter.

The increase was due to three in the labor force (4 percent) over the employed persons (3 percent).

Meanwhile, the number of unemployed persons increased by 16 percent, with an incidence of those who were unemployed (16.8 percent) and those looking for work for the first time (9.8 percent).

According to INE, the increase in employed persons was influenced by both women and men.

The sectors contributing to the growth were accommodation, food services, health activities, agriculture, and fish. At the same time, there was an increase in formally salaried and self-employed workers by occupational category.

On the other hand, the sectors that showed decreases were construction and commerce.

According to the survey, the participation and employment rate has continued to increase, although it remains lower than in the period before the pandemic.

The Government dismissed these data as a “significant deterioration” of the labor market.

“The economy has continued to create salaried jobs mostly. In the last year, we have created 280,000 jobs”, the Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, told journalists.

With this, Marcel indicated that the labor force has been increasing, “recovering from the drop in the participation rate during the pandemic”.

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