With a partial and uneven recovery of employment in Latin America, the labor outlook in the region is still uncertain. It is estimated that more than 30% of the jobs lost in 2020 were not recovered during 2021.
“The pandemic must be seen as a crisis in the normal scenario of what crisis processes are. Therefore, the post-pandemic stage must be seen as a post-crisis stage. And the crisis, what it necessarily produces, is a change in the composition of the labor markets and in the types of employment and skills,” explains Claudio Rama, economist and Academic Director of the Universidad de la Empresa (UDE) Uruguay, Make sure you live.
Rama points out that two situations are currently developing. “First, the proportion of investment or technology by unit of employment created is greater. That is to say, today, for each unit of employment, a technological investment and a higher capital are required. The second thing is that there is a recomposition of labour markets towards sectors that have greater intensity and greater composition of required competition. Therefore, the region will be marked by a differentiated recovery from work towards an increase in employment in the most technologically advanced sectors.”
In Latin America, this Job recovery “has been partially achieved,” but still far from returning to the pre-covid situation,” he acknowledges. Andrés Rave, Director of Solutions for South American Insurance Companies SURA. And he argues that “Recent ILO reports qualify as “mediocre” job recovery in Latin AmericaIt is estimated that more than 30% of the jobs lost in 2020 - a figure close to 50 million jobs - were not recovered during 2021.”
Informal employment in the region
This situation of reactivation of work brings with it greater informal employment and job insecurity. Rave clarifies that “the rates of informal employment, already high in 2019, grew rapidly during the pandemic, it is estimated that this informality reaches almost 50%, which also creates a vicious circle due to the difficulty in accessing subsidies and aid".
According to the report of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal), the growth of employment that was recorded until the third quarter of 2021 in Latin America has to do with informality. Above all, “In Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru, informal employment has represented around 70%”, date El Universal when analyzing the report.
In the case of Mexico, according to the National Occupation and Employment Survey (Enoe) of Inegi, the informality rate was 56.5% during December 2021This figure reached the highest level in the last 27 months, while in September 2019 it was 56.6%.
Other sector disadvantaged by the pandemic is that of women. According to the report Women's economic autonomy in sustainable and equal recovery of ECLAC “the working conditions of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, generating a setback of more than a decade in the progress achieved in terms of labor participation.”
Faced with this scenario, Rama believes that "we are going to have a growth in informality in relation to previous stages. Until the economy has higher levels of growth. I would say that, Informality will continue and increase, but there will also be an increase in more productive and efficient employment, which is associated with more technology as part of the recovery process.”
The most affected sectors
As for the most affected sectors, Rama believes that "they will depend on the extent to which the trade in Internet, the purchase of digital services products and everything that is the economy that has grown internally. In relation to the external sectors, those that were not benefited, such as the tourism, will have an increase".
To conclude, the director of UDE Uruguay maintains that "the daily life of people gradually recovers a pre-pandemic scenario. It is worth discussing whether we should return to a traditional world or use the pandemic as an accelerator of the transformations that are already underway towards a more virtual logic.”
Rave de Seguros SURA adds that “there is no doubt that the transformation of employability has brought this question to the countries of the region. Virtuality and remote work have globalized employment opportunities and the Importation of human talent.
The rise of freelancers, independents and concepts such as digital nomads, have gone from being a novelty to something increasingly common. The shared use of office spaces and mixed schedules seem to be here to stay, behind a search for more efficient models of employability.”
In any case, there is a risk that technology and the growing need for digital profiles will further widen social and employment gaps, leading to the continuation of an uneven and poor-quality employment recovery scheme.