New job contracts 41% below pre-pandemic

From January to August of this year, 157,583 contracts have been registered in the Ministry of Labor and Labor Development (Mitradel). The figure represents an improvement over the pattern during the first quarter, but the figures indicate that the country is 41% below the pre-pandemic results reports La Prensa.

The eighth month of 2022 reflects that the downward trend was maintained throughout the year when the records are compared with the last period before the economic crisis caused by the restrictions imposed to contain covid-19.

In the same period of 2019, 26,223 contracts were achieved, while in 2018 there were 294,622 work agreements.

The contracts registered in the Mitradel cannot be interpreted in their entirety as new jobs generated in the private sector, since a new contract can follow a dismissal or resignation.

The records show the natural rotation of the market and also measure the temperature of what is happening, by area, economic sector, and type of labor agreement.

The country is not only generating 41% fewer formal jobs, but it also has five times more informal jobs than before the pandemic.

Business consultant René Quevedo said that according to information from the National Institute of Statistics and Census, the economy is adding at least 10,000 new informal workers per month, five times more than the average for the 2009-2019 decade.

This explains the decrease in unemployment, which went from 11.3% in October 2021 to 9.9% in April 2022.

Basically, informal workers and civil servants increased, accounting for 71% of the expansion of employment between October 2021 and April 2022, but the trend of job insecurity continues, indicated by the World Labor Organization, as the main threat to the IVM Program (Disability, Old Age and Death).