[News] Unemployment in Latin America and the Caribbean rose to more than 10% due to the pandemic

[EvKirito]

                                                             

 

Moderate economic growth, estimated at 3.5%, is projected insufficient to recover the ground lost in the crisis.

 

 

Employment in Latin America and the Caribbean will enter 2021 under intensive care with an unprecedented unemployment rate of more than 10%, as a result of the pandemic that triggered 30 million job losses in 2020, the ILO reported this Thursday.

 

"The 2020 Labor Outlook registers a strong increase in the unemployment rate that would rise up to 2.5 percentage points compared to the previous year, going from 8.1% to 10.6%," says the ILO in its annual regional report about employment.

 

"This would mean that the number of people looking for a job who cannot get it increases by 5.4 million and reaches 30.1 million", given the impact of covid-19, says the International Labor Organization (ILO), whose office for Latin America and the Caribbean it is in Lima.

 

The future does not look very optimistic either: in 2021 the unemployment rate could rise again to 11.2%, the ILO warned.

 

Moderate economic growth, estimated at 3.5%, is projected insufficient to recover the ground lost in the crisis, according to the United Nations labor organization.

 

The uncertainty about the evolution of the pandemic with the possibility of new infections and a second wave, and the vaccination processes that would only arrive in the region in 2021 make the worst signs of these indicators grow.

 

"Employment is in a bed ICU, we must take the necessary measures to get out of that healthy and with prosperity and sustainable growth in employment," said the ILO regional director, Vinicius Pinheiro, during a virtual press conference in Lima on the labor report.

 

“Now it is essential to achieve economic growth with employment. Employment is crucial to reduce poverty and confront the amplification of inequalities that this pandemic is leaving as a sequel, "added the ILO director.

 

"The region was hit hard by this crisis, even more than others in the world," Pinheiro reiterated.

 

The head of the ILO attributed this setback "in large part to structural problems that existed and we knew about."

These problems include high social inequality and high informality.

 

On January 28, before the coronavirus crisis reached the region, the ILO had said that more than 25 million Latin Americans and Caribbean people were unemployed, and the number would surely increase in 2020 due to the weak growth of the economies.