Chile: Unemployment among migrant workers declines and jobs lost at the worst time of the pandemic have been regained

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL -In the September-November quarter, lower unemployment was recorded among migrant workers. According to the report of the National Statistics Institute (INE), the unemployment rate in this group was 6.4%, a decrease of 0.7 points compared to the previous period.

With this, the indicator that measures the proportion of people looking for and out of work out of the labor force (composed of employed and unemployed) decreased 3.5 percentage points (pp) in twelve months.

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According to the report, this was due to an increase in the labor force (8.5%), lower than that of the employed (12.7%).

The number of unemployed persons reached 67,400, which implied a reduction of 9.7% every quarter (without seasonal adjustment) and 29.6% in twelve months. According to the report, this was due to a decrease in the number of unemployed.

From the employed perspective, the indicator that measures them in relation to the working-age population remained the same as in the previous quarter at 73.8%. In twelve months, it increased by 5.6 pp. Thus, the 980,430 migrant workers reflect an increase of 0.7% compared to the previous period and 12.7% in twelve months.

The main driver, according to the report, was new job openings in the accommodation and food service (53.1%), construction (12.9%), and manufacturing (9.2%) sectors.

With this scenario, jobs among migrants had already recovered what was lost during the worst period of the pandemic (174,680 were destroyed in May-June) and exceeded the level before they arrived in the country (904,850 employed in January-March 2020).

Along these lines, informal employment represents 48.2% of what has been created since the worst of the pandemic. The rate that measures the proportion of informal workers in general employment increased two-tenths of a percentage point in the quarter to 29.1%, surpassing the 23.1% recorded before the pandemic and the 27.8% recorded a year ago.

At the same time, the labor force participation rate, which measures the labor force over the working-age population, was 78.9%, reflecting that it is still far from the 80.3% recorded in January-March 2020 before the pandemic.

LOOKED AT BY GENDER AND TYPE OF EDUCATION

By gender, the unemployment rate of foreign women stood at 7.2%, and that of men at 5.8%, which implied a decrease of 2.9 pp and 3.9 pp, respectively.

By educational level, the employed expansion was driven by university studies, followed by secondary education, primary education, and technical education, with annual increases that meant reaching totals of 360,421, 431,677, 60,437, and 122,121 persons, respectively.

With information from Diario Financiero