Unemployment affected 9.5 % in Peru’s Lima, while 4.6 million are employed

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The labor market in Lima registered an increase of 28.7% in the June-July-August quarter of this year, which means that 4.6 million people are employed, but another 9.5% of the population is unemployed in the Peruvian capital.

According to the technical report on the labor market situation prepared by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), the increase in the employed population still does not recover pre-pandemic levels. It shows a 5.8% decline compared to the same quarter of 2019.

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Workers with adequate employment increased by 44% to 2.4 million people, while the underemployed population, which works less than 35 hours per week, increased by 15% to 2.2 million people.

However, the adequate employment rate decreased by 23.8% compared to 2019 and the underemployment rate grew by 26.9% compared to the same year.

Regarding unemployment in Lima, the INEI report revealed that it rose to 9.5%, which means that 489,900 people were actively looking for work during those months.

Unemployment in the Peruvian capital, which has a third of the national population, is still higher than in the similar quarter of 2019 by 3.7 percentage points, although it was reduced by six points compared to the same quarter of 2020 affected by the restrictions due to the pandemic.

Regarding the employed population, the increase in workers under 25 years of age by 63% stood out, followed by those over 45 years of age by 36% and those between 25 and 44 years of age by 16.8%.

Likewise, the employed population with primary education increased by 97%, in contrast to workers with university education, which decreased by 3.4%.

The main productive sectors that drove the increase in the employed population were Construction (97%), Manufacturing (43%), Commerce (36%) and Services (15.5%).

In turn, the average monthly income in Lima rose to 1,601 soles (400 dollars), 2.5% (9.6 dollars) more than in the same quarter of last year, but 6.7% (28.9 dollars) less than in the same period of 2019.