Tourism and agriculture led job creation in April

He labor market in April showed a relatively favorable performance. Although the unemployment indicator showed a rebound compared to the March figures, and stood at 10.7%, it also improved in 0.5 percentage points in relation to the data for April 2022, which was 11.2%.

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Likewise, in terms of employment, the Dane highlighted yesterday, when presenting these figures, that April showed a significant improvement in its indicators. The global participation rate (the percentage ratio between the economically active population and the population of working age), which went from 63.6% in April 2022 to 54.6% in April of this year; Regarding the occupancy rate, it rose from 56.5% to 57.7%.

In that month they registered 22.74 million employed in the country, 785,000 more than in April of a year ago. And close to half of those jobs that were generated, in annual terms, originated in sectors such as tourism and agriculture, which together contributed 380,000 jobs, that is, 48.4% of the new jobs.

“The greatest contribution is found in accommodation and food services, something that has been quite dynamic in the country in recent months, in several cities that we do not even recognize as having a tourist vocation”, explained the director of Dane, Piedad Urdinola. In this sector, 196,000 jobs were reported in April in relation to the figures for the same month of 2022.

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A growth of 7.6%, which according to the Dane director, is statistically significant. This sector employed 1.72 million people in the country in April.
The next sector with the highest generation of jobs in the last year, cut to April, is agriculture, livestock and fishing, with 184,000 additional workers, which is equivalent to a growth of 14.4% of the labor force in the sector. . In agriculture there are 3.2 million workers.

Likewise, the Dane also highlighted the Contribution of jobs from other sectors in annual termsas is the case of manufacturing industries (162,000 additional jobs), or public administration, with 118,000 more jobs compared to April 2022.

“In April we saw strong employment and above the stable level we had seen before March However, the annual slowdown in employment that had been interrupted in March continued”, commented María Claudia Llanes, BBVA Research economist for Colombia.

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The other side of the coin was unemployment.. The figures for April showed that in the country there were 2.73 million people looking for work last month, which implies that 29,000 people left that situation compared to the 2.76 million in April 2022.

Likewise, the Dane highlighted that the gender gap in terms of unemployment stands at 5.6 percentage points. While for them the indicator stood at 8.4%, in the case of women, for April, it was at 13.9%.

This youThis trend also prevails in the main 13 cities and metropolitan areas, with a gap of 37 points that responds to an unemployment indicator of 9.4% in the case of men and 13.1% for women.

(See: This is how the country did in terms of unemployment during February 2023).

“On this occasion, the unemployment rate rose slightly compared to March 2023, from 10% to 10.7% for the national total. This was due to two reasons: more people looking for work, that is, more people in the labor force and additionally less job creation at the margin.”, explained Sergio Olarte, chief economist at Scotiabank Colpatria.

In addition to this, the Dane also highlighted that there was a reduction of 212,000 citizens In the number of people outside the labor market, those who are of working age but are not looking for a job or are working, such as students, rentiers, people with disabilities or dedicated to household chores. In April of last year, there were 14.1 million people in this category, and by April 2023, 13.9 million were registered.

(See: Unemployment: why it continues to fall and how is informality).

LAURA LUCIA BECERRA ELEJALDE
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