Despite the economic upheavals of recent months, marked by high inflation and moderate growth, the labour market is on a stable recovery path. The unemployment rate reached 9.6% in July, a reduction of 1.5 percentage points compared to 11.3% recorded in the same month last year, and is readjusted to levels of 2018 and 2017. According to the data presented on Thursday morning by the director of the Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), demographer Piedad Urdinola, job creation in Colombia has also remained robust and 1.1 million jobs have been reincorporated compared to the same period in 2022.
In this way, the labour market continues its comeback and shakes off the scars left by the confinements during the months of health crisis. Director Urdinola was diplomatic and addressed one of the central questions: what are the causes of the sustained momentum of job creation in a context of cooling growth? He then stressed that his examination was limited to monthly statistical monitoring, a task of DANE, and not to establish cause and effect factors on macroeconomic phenomena.
With all the limitations and blind spots that the exercise of measuring the data of the Colombian labor market has, for July it is estimated that the employed population has reached 23.1 million people, an increase of 5.1% compared to the 22.05 million jobs registered in July of the previous year. In a gender perspective, DANE's diagnosis suggests that of that total, 674,000 jobs were recovered by women, while 453,000 were paid by men.
A news cataloged as "very important" by Urdinola, given that, among the dysfunctions of the Colombian labor world, there is consensus around the limitations and other inequities for women in issues of access and social coverage. A positive fact that the director of the statistical agency detects "in all areas and geographical domains". Another positive reading is that the construction sector was the one that recovered the most jobs in July, adding 234,000 thousand new contracts. A detail that comes as a breath of oxygen for the performance of an item whose figures have been in free fall since January.
According to the DANE bulletin, the unemployed population fell by 269,000 people, falling from 7% to 6.2% between the two Julys. It is worth remembering that, following the parameters of the International Labour Organization, Colombia has a population of 39 million people of working age among its 51 million inhabitants. The population segment that has had the greatest boost to the figures presented this morning has been, as expected, that of adults between 25 and 54 years old. The age range that concentrates the greatest dynamics in the labor force and within which, according to the report, notable improvements for women are also evident: "It is statistically significant because, remember, women have had less participation in the labor market."
In the same vein, the number of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 24 in employment increased by 134,000 new jobs. A fact that denotes changes in the configuration of the Colombian labor and social world also stands out. Domestic jobs, often unpaid and which have fallen in a leaden way on women, had a decrease of 320,000 fewer people in the sector. In any case, a broader look suggests that the results, despite breathing new air, still paint a worrying picture. One need only look at the staggering 2.45 million people out of work to remember that the good run only returns the country to levels of earlier times and that there are still many structural challenges to be addressed.
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