Colombia’s unemployment stood at 14.2 % in March

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombia’s unemployment in March 2021 stood at 14.2%, a 1.6 percentage point increase compared to the same month in 2020 when the rate stood at 12.6%, as reported Friday by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE).

DANE’s director Juan Daniel Oviedo explained that one year after the start of the coronavirus pandemic the country continues to register worrying growths, such as the increase of 468,000 people unemployed in March 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year.

“In the country we are estimating approximately 3,437,000 people unemployed in March 2021 when in March 2020, let’s call it the first month of the pandemic, we only registered 2,969,000 people,” Oviedo said in a press conference.

The figures, he added, are more concerning when compared to the same month in 2019 when the labor market was not affected by a crisis such as the one triggered by the coronavirus.

“While we have 468,000 more people unemployed in March 2021 compared to March 2020, when compared to a March unaffected by the pandemic we have 755,000 more people unemployed,” he explained.

However, he detailed that in March 2021 the organization observed growth of approximately 271,000 people in the national employed population for the first time since the sequence of months affected by the health emergency.

According to him, 92% of growth in the employed population between March 2020 and March 2021 is explained by the market recovery in the country’s 3 main cities.

“With the impact of the pandemic being highly concentrated in the country’s main urban clusters, one year later, we are witnessing a significant recovery of the employed population,” he said.

WOMEN REMAIN THE MOST AFFECTED

Overall, the country’s employed population in March 2021 stood at 20.8 million people, 1.3% more (271,000 employed) compared to the same month in 2020.

Meanwhile, the inactive population in the assessed period stood at 16 million people, 239,000 less compared to the same month last year.

Unemployment continues to have a greater impact on women compared to the number of unemployed men.

“The growth of the country’s unemployed population in March 2021 was concentrated in women, with an increase of 19.3% (statistically significant variation) of women unemployed compared to the same month in 2020. In the case of unemployed men, this increase was 11.7%,” detailed the DANE.

The cities of Tunja, Florencia, Popayán, Valledupar, Quibdó, Neiva, Riohacha, Santa Marta, Armenia and Sincelejo contributed 0.5 percentage points to the statistics of the unemployed population with 238,000 people.

DANE yesterday disclosed that poverty in Colombia rose to 42.5% last year, an increase of 6.8 percentage points from 35.7% in 2019, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic.

DANE’s director assured that extreme poverty rose from 9.6% in 2019 to 15.1% last year, an increase of 5.5 percentage points and “higher than the incidence recorded in the immediately preceding year.”

Source: efe