Two out of every 10 jobs created in the last year are informal

He Dane delivered a new update on labor market numberswith the informality report for the quarter between the months of February and April 2023. According to the report, and when reviewing the employment figures, close to two out of every 10 jobs recovered in the last year would be informal.

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According to figures from the statistical entity, for the reference quarter there were 22.58 million employed persons in the country, of which 9.5 million were formal and 12.9 million informal.

If these data are compared with those of the same quarter of 2022, 817,000 jobs were recovered, of which 634,000 are formal and 183,000 informal, which implies that the majority of recovery has been in formal jobsand only two out of ten are informal jobs.

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However, when looking at the situation by sector, in two branches of activity the predominance of recovered jobs is in the informal sector: agriculture and the accommodation and restaurant sector.

In the case of the former, in the reference quarter 3.3 million workers were registered, and of these 2.9 million were informal. Compared to the February-April period of last year, 167,000 jobs were recovered in the sector, and of those 116,000 were informal.

by the side of hotel and food service sector, which employed 1.66 million workers between February and April of this year, the bulk of the employed are also informal (1.29 million). Hence, most of the jobs that recovered compared to last year’s data have not been formal jobs either.

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When comparing the employment figures between the data for 2022 and that of this year, 179,000 jobs were created in these activities, but only 31,000 were in formal conditions, while 148,000 new jobs were informal.

An opposite situation occurs in commerce, the largest employer in Colombia, with 4 million people working in this activity for the quarter between February and April 2023. There, 71,000 formal jobs were recovered between one year and the next, but 54,000 people who were working informally also left this sector.

In ‘white silver’, 17,000 new jobs were created in the sector compared to the data for February-April 2022, when there were 3.99 million workers in this sector.

In the manufacturing industries, 2.43 million workers were recorded in the quarter, while in 2022 there were 2.37 million people working in that sector between February and April. That means 63,000 additional workers..
But when looking at the composition of those jobs that recovered, it stands out that 79,000 new formal jobs were created, while the number of informally employed people fell by 15,000.

And also, the situation in the sector of artistic activities, entertainment, recreation and other service activities stands out, one of the main protagonists in the GDP of the first quarter. In the February-April 2023 quarter, this sector employed 1.8 million people in the country, 87,000 more in relation to the same mobile quarter of 2022. There, 54,000 new jobs were created in formal conditions, but also 33,000 in the informal sector.

It is worth noting that, according to the Dane indicators, in the country the proportion of informally employed was 57.5%, which meant a decrease of 1.3 percentage points compared to the same quarter of the previous year (58.8%). .
This rate is lower in the top 13 cities and metropolitan areaswhere the proportion was 42.4%, 1.8 percentage points below the moving quarter February-April 2022 (44.2%).

For the analysis period, between 23 large cities and metropolitan areas, those with the highest proportion of informality were: Sincelejo (69.3%), Riohacha (66.7%) and Santa Marta (63.9%), while the cities with the lowest proportion of informality were: Bogotá DC (33.2%), Manizales (33, 4%) and Medellin (38.9%).

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The Dane highlighted that for the mobile quarter February – April 2023, 84.9% of the employed population that worked in micro-enterprises was informal, while in small companies, medium-sized companies, and large companies, the proportion of informal workers was: 21.0% , 7.2%, and 3.6%, respectively.

It is worth noting that in all company sizes the proportion of informal workers in the country decreased when comparing with the data of 2022.

LAURA LUCIA BECERRA ELEJALDE
Journalist Portfolio