Unemployment in Colombia was 11.8% during October – DANE

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) has revealed the employment figures registered during October in Colombia. The outlook improved if the statistics for that month are compared, both with the same period last year and those of September 2021.

According to the entity, the unemployment rate in the national total was 11.8%, which represented a reduction of 2.9 percentage points compared to the same month of 2020, when the rate was 14.7%. Likewise, it reported that for the 13 cities and metropolitan areas, this rate was 12.3%.

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This implies that between October of one year and the other, approximately 854,000 Colombians were placed in jobs, generating a “statistically significant” impact on the broad participation and employment rates.

After all, the former presented a rate of 61.9%, representing a very slight drop compared to 62.3% in the same month of 2020, while the latter showed a result of 54.6%, much better than the 53.2% of last year. The latter, it must be said, is equivalent to 22.1 million people in employment.

Thus, DANE’s analysis indicates that Colombia has already reached the level of employment recorded in the same month of 2019. Although it is still necessary to recover some 685,000 jobs, the fact is that the unemployed population is showing an annual reduction of 19%.

However, seen in detail, the figures show that the country has a lot to do, especially in terms of gender gaps, because while among men in the national total, the unemployment rate for October 2021 was 8.7%, for women, it stood at 15.9%. To contrast this, it is necessary to take the figures for the same period last year, which were 11.6% and 21.5% respectively.

Likewise, it is worth noting that seen by age ranges, the most significant increases in the employed population in the national total were registered in women between 25 and 54 years of age (474,000) and in men of the same group (193,000), in what the Dane again defined as statistically significant variations.

For its part, the report from the perspective of the branches of economic activity indicates that in the national total, professional, scientific, technical, and administrative services activities had the most significant increase in employed persons in October 2021 (212 thousand), with respect to October 2020, thus contributing one percentage point to the national variation; within this branch, cleaning activities stood out, by contributing 12.2 points.

On the contrary, in artistic activities, entertainment, recreation, and other services, the number of employed persons decreased by 54,000 people to contribute -0.3 percentage points to the national variation; Maintenance and repair of personal and household goods contributed -3.5 points to this branch.

At the same time, the entity reported that private employees increased by 766,000 employed persons compared to the same month of the previous year, which caused a contribution of 3.6 percentage points. On the other hand, 168,000 government employees dropped, thus contributing -0.8 points to the general employment report.

Finally, it was learned that 59.2% of the employed population at the national level in October worked more than 40 effective hours per week; 27.4% worked between 21 and 40 hours, and 13.4% worked up to 20 hours. In October 2020, these proportions were 56.8%, 27.8% and 15.5%, respectively.