Chile unemployment rate down to 8.4% in September amid signs of recovery

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The record through September is 3.9 percentage points lower over the same period last year, said the National Statistics Institute (INE). In the quarter through August, unemployment stood at 8.5%.

The figure between July and September is “the result of the increase in the labor force (8.4%), lower than that of employed (13.3%) and the decrease of 26.2% in unemployed,” INE said.

Among the unemployed, the number of people laid off decreased by 27.1%.

The economic sectors leading in job growth were commerce, construction, housing and food services, sectors that rebounded after the relaxation of the measures against the pandemic.

Chile has vaccinated over 70% of its 19 million inhabitants against the coronavirus.

The informal employment rate reached 27.7%, an increase of 4.2 percentage points in 12 months, while the number of informally employed grew by 33.4%.

Absentee workers – who benefited from a government plan to temporarily suspend their contracts and save their jobs – decreased by 42.3% in 12 months, equivalent to 469,180 people, and represented 7.7% of the total number of employed.