In Colombia, having a contract with legal benefits seems to be an exception. This is shown by the figures published this week by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), where it is revealed that Less than half of employed Colombians have health and pension contributions through the employment relationship with their employer.
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The data, which has remained with very little variation in the last three years, is particularly high in regions of the Caribbean Coast, while in cities like Manizales it has shown a tendency to decrease. How have these figures behaved? We tell you.
Post pandemic growth
According to Dane, the national total of informal workers in the country during the first quarter of this year (January to March) was 58.2%. This is equivalent to that a little more than three out of five workers do not have a health and pension contribution in their contract.
The data varies little with respect to the previous ones. Statistics show that in the same past year the percentage was 58.8%, which represents only a decrease of 0.6 percentage points.
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The trend shows that after the covid-19 pandemic Informality in the country has had a high growth. According to the historical figures of Dane, between 2015 and 2019, in the months of January and March, this indicator never exceeded 50% of the working population. In fact, it ranged from 49% to 47%.
For the year 2020, there was no measurement due to the global confinement. The following year, 2021, the figure skyrockets and reaches 60.8%, that is, an increase of 13 percentage points compared to 2019.
The figures by city
Five cities on the Colombian Caribbean Coast will lead the ranking with the highest percentage of workers without paying health or pension contributions. This is equivalent to 20% of the total of 23 measured by the Dane survey. They are Sincelejo, Riohacha, Santa Marta, Valledupar and Monteria. In all cases the number exceeds 60% of informal workers.
In the case of SIncelejo, which leads the averages, 67.4% of workers, that is, around two out of three people, state that they do not pay health or pension contributions with their employer. In fact, since 2021, the capital of Sucre leads this ladder that until 2021 led Cúcuta, in Norte de Santander.
Moreover, the border city with Venezuela has improved on this issue in recent years. While between 2015 and 2019 it always led this study, with values that reached 69%, since 2021 it has shown a constant decline until reaching, in the first quarter of this year, 58% of workers in the informal sector, the lowest figure in the last eight years.
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The drop in this indicator has meant that this city went from a first place that has been maintained since 2017, to eighth in the national total, below Florencia (Caquetá) and Quibdó (Chocó).
See in this graph how informality has decreased in Cúcutacontrasted with the growth that it has presented in Sincelejo.
On the contrary, the city with the best indicators is Manizales, which during the first quarter of this year reported 32.7% of informal workers, which is equivalent to around one in three employees without health or pension.
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The capital of Caldas has shown a steady decline in this indicator compared to previous first quarters: 38% in 2021 and 34.1% in 2022, for a decline of 5 percentage points in two years.
The figure is not surprising since, since 2015, this city has been, together with Bogotá and Medellín, andAmong the three with the largest number of workers who make health and pension contributions with their employers.
In which companies is the phenomenon seen the most?
Informality affects microenterprises to a greater extent.
Héctor Fabio Zamora /´EL TIEMPO Archive
According to the Dane report, it is in microenterprises where informality occurs the most in the country: 85.3%, of those who stated that they worked in this type of company, between January and March of this year, did not have a health and pension contribution by your employer.
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The amount is barely 0.2 percentage points lower than that registered in the same period of the previous year, when it was located at 85.5%. In second place, but with a much smaller indicator, appear small companies. There, 23.3% of the workers stated that they were in the informal sector.
As for medium-sized companies, 8% of informality was broken, data one percentage point lower than the same period of 2022. Something similar happened in large companies, where it went from 5.8% of informal workers to 3.8%.
RAFAEL QUINTERO CERON
EL TIEMPO Data Unit
@TheFugazi
