The labor market continued its recovery in December, although it is becoming slower. According to Dane, the unemployment rate was 10.3 percent0.8 percentage points less than that of a year ago.
With that, the average figure for the end of 2022 was 11.2 percentwhich represents a decrease of 2.6 points compared to that registered in 2021.
(Also read: Mobility Apps: who works on them and how much the market moves)
“This figure shows that the recovery of the economy was higher than that of employmentWell, we never recovered occupancy levels like the ones we saw just before the health emergency, while activity did exceed pre-pandemic levels,» said Anwar Rodríguez, vice president of Anif.
In fact, Bruce Mac Master, president of Andi, highlighted that the average unemployment rate for 2022, despite being lower than that of 2021 (13.8 percent) and that of 2020 (16.5 percent), is still It is above the 10.9 percent registered in 2019, before the covid-19 pandemic began.
«The figures reflect a recovery of the productive apparatus, but also a moderation of growth that will be reflected in 2023. This confirms the need to focus our efforts on counteract the effect of the slowdown on employment”, concluded the union leader.
The figures reflected a recovery of the productive apparatus, but also a moderation of growth that will be reflected in 2023
Even when reviewing the seasonally adjusted rate —the one that allows month-to-month comparisons—, it can be seen how unemployment in December (11.3 percent in seasonally adjusted terms) grew compared to the data for November, which was 10.8 percent. , according to the Danish.
“When comparing December with November, adjusting for the seasonality of each month, employment remained stable, at high levels, taking into account the strong rebound that it had from mid-2021 to mid-year. By 2023 we expect lower employment growthin line with the slowdown in the economy,” said María Claudia Llanes, BBVA Research economist for Colombia.
The greatest recovery in employment in December occurred in the manufacturing industry, which hired more than 249,000 new people until it had 2.5 million jobs; however, and despite the year-end season, in which commerce tends to have more movement, this sector was the one that lost the most jobs (-121,000).
(Read also: Pension reform: these are the proposals to prepare the bill)
For Jaime Alberto Cabal, president of the National Federation of Merchants (Fenalco), the decrease in the number of jobs confirms the drop in consumption, in part, due to the inflationary pressures and the monetary policy decisions that are reducing the payment capacity of households, while showing the coming economic slowdown. «Of course, not having celebrated the day without VAT also affected,» he stressed.
total, The employed population of the country reached 22.4 million in Decemberwhich means that there were 973,000 more jobs than in the same period of the previous year, when the figure was 21.4 million.
The rest of the sectors that led this recovery were public administration and defense, education and health (+207,000 jobs), artistic activities and entertainment (+195,000), the supply of electricity, gas, water and waste management (+ 137,000) and construction (+136,000).
«These positive results respond to the growing volume of low-income housing (VIS) projects that began work in the last year promoted by the Mi Casa Ya program,» said the president in charge of Camacol, Edwin Chirivi.
On the other hand, commerce was not the only sector that lost employees in the last month of 2022. In agriculture and professional and scientific activities will also have the number of workers, with a drop of 92,000 and 41,000 compared to a year ago, respectively. Piedad Urdinola, director of the statistical entity, said that the reduction occurred, above all, in jobs in private security, accounting and legal activities.
And if we take into account the average for 2022, the Dane showed that the branches that contributed the most positively to the variation in the employed population were the artistic activities, entertainment, recreation and other service activities amid the pandemic recovery; followed by manufacturing industries.
In December 2022, the worker, private employee; domestic employee and boss or employer were the occupational positions that contributed positively to the variation of the employed in the national total with 4.6, 0.6 and 0.4 percentage points, respectively.
(Also read: Working hours: what is the economic impact of reducing it to 47 hours this year)
Employment continues to recover in Colombia
Less unemployed
Meanwhile, in December 2022, the number of unemployed was 2.57 millionthat is, there were 111,000 fewer people in this situation compared to the same period in 2021, when the data reached 2.68 million.
For its part, the inactive population or that is outside the labor force was 14.2 million people in December, which meant a drop of 311,000 compared to the figure of 14.5 million for the same period of the previous year.
Depending on the type of activity carried out, the greatest variation in the population outside the labor force was in household chores with 737,000 fewerof which 490,000 were women and 247,000 were men.
Regarding the proportion of the informally employed population in the country, it stood at 57.6 percent in December 2022, which represented a decrease of 1.7 points compared to the same month of the previous year, when it was 59.3. percent.
Regarding the total of the 32 cities and metropolitan areas, the Dane revealed that the departments of Arauca and Quibdó presented the highest unemployment rates in the period January-December 2022, with 29.4 and 23.8 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, the lowest rates were in San Andrés, with 6.9 percent, and Leticia, with 8.8 percent.
Women recovered 664,000 jobs
By sex, while the unemployment rate for men was 8.3 percent in December 2022 (0.40 points less than the previous year), that of women stood at 12.9 percent (1.6 points less than in December 2021). This means that the gap is still 4.6 points.
Despite this difference, women continued to lead the recovery of employment in December last year, because of the 973,000 jobs that were created, as reported by Dane, 664,000 were occupied by women and only 309,000 by men. In addition, most of them were between 25 and 54 years of age.
And if we take into account all of 2022, women recovered more than one million positions compared to 633,000 for men.
equally women were also the ones who came out of unemployment the most in the last month of the year. Of the total of 111,000 less unemployed people, 91,000 were women, while 20,000 were men.
Lower youth employment According to the Dane, the quarterly unemployment rate for young people between 15 and 28 years of age in October-December 2022 was 16.7 percent, a better figure compared to 19.2 percent in the same period of last year.
The cities with the highest youth unemployment rates were Quibdó and Ibagué, with 33.9 and 24.9 percent, respectively. On the other hand, Bucaramanga and Manizales registered the lowest, with 12.8 and 13.5 percent, respectively.
