ILO predicts high unemployment for Latin America in 2022

Latin America and the Caribbean resumed economic growth in 2021, but this year they could contribute 13.9 percent of the registered unemployed worldwide, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates.

This will be the result of a very limited reactivation of the labor market, based largely on informal work, resulting in 10 percent unemployment, which would decrease to 9.3 percent in 2022 and 8.8 in 2023, also according to ILO.

Both levels are still below the rate of 7.9 percent recorded in 2019, before the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, said the World Social and Unemployment Outlook 2022 report, published by the agency.

These percentages translate into 28.8 million unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 and 27.6 million in 2023, while the number stood at 24.3 million back in 2019.

The ILO pointed out that the region was the most seriously affected by Covid-19 in 2020, with high levels of contagion and mortality, a 7.5 percent drop in Gross Domestic Product, and a decrease in employment equivalent to 36 million full-time jobs.

In 2020, a net job loss of approximately 25 million people was recorded in the Americas subregion, of which almost 82 percent resulted in departures from the labor force.

While the health and economic crisis affected all sectors, the measures to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the mobility restrictions protected labor relocation in informal work, which in previous similar situations was a labor adjustment mechanism in the region.