The National Institute of Statistics (INE) recently released the employment figures for the moving quarter February-April 2024, and the region of La Araucanía does not fare well, a complex scenario in terms of labor and informality keeps the region behind the incipient general takeoff that is observed at the country level.
Rising unemployment
The unemployment rate stood at 9.0%, registering an increase of 2.0 percentage points (pp.) compared to the same quarter of the previous year. With this measurement, the region accumulates 6 consecutive annual increases in the unemployment rate. In the regional ranking, it was ranked as the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country. The number of unemployed in La Araucanía in this last measurement reached 42,870 people, suffering a powerful increase of 32.2% equivalent to 10,450 people in relation to the previous year, thus completing 6 consecutive moving quarters with increases in the unemployed.
Weakness in job creation
In the last quarter, 5,860 jobs were created compared to the same quarter of the previous year. The capacity to generate employment has weakened significantly in 2024 in the region, at the beginning of the year more than 18 thousand jobs were created, a figure that fell the following quarter to just over 11 thousand positions and finally to 5.86 thousand. this last measurement. This loss of speed in the creation of jobs reflects the low dynamism of the local labor market, which is not being able to generate jobs in a sustainable manner and sufficient to absorb the incorporation of more people into the workforce. In February-April 2024, the region’s labor force grew by 3.5% in annual terms (equivalent to 16,320 people), while those employed only grew 1.4% in 12 months (5,860 people), therefore, the rest , the 10,450 became part of the unemployed.
Informality: the stone in the shoe
The labor informality rate (TOI) in the region reached 38.9%, once again the highest among the 16 regions of the country, and exceeding by a wide margin the national average of 28.2%. Compared to the same quarter of 2023, regional informality marked an increase of 2.7 percentage points (pp.). In numerical terms, there are 169,080 people employed informally in the region, a figure that grew by 9.0% compared to the previous year, equivalent to 13,900 more people in informal employment. While those in formal employment recorded a drop of 2.9% annually, equivalent to 8,040 people. That is, in the last year in the region, 8,040 formal jobs were destroyed and 13,900 informal positions were created, which in net terms reflects the increase of 5,860 employees, which is explained by the rise in informal employment.
In the last 6 moving quarters, employment has been driven mainly by informal employment, while formal employment has been falling. This is bad news, since it reveals that the regional economy is not only generating few jobs, but also that those few jobs are informal. This in turn reflects that people, not seeing job possibilities, look for alternatives in informality, which leaves the region in a scenario of economic and labor fragility since these are jobs of lower quality, with lower average incomes. and without health or pension protection.
Work emergency
More than four years after the pandemic, La Araucanía has not yet recovered the employment levels it had prior to the health emergency. In the pre-pandemic period (December-February 2020 quarter), the region recorded a labor employment rate of 55.6%, that is, of the total number of people of working age, 55.6% were employed. Currently, according to the latest employment figures, employment is 52.1%, this indicates that the region of La Araucanía has a deficit of almost 29 thousand jobs to return to the employment that existed before the pandemic. In the historical context, with current employment levels, La Araucanía has gone back 13 years, going back to the employment rates it had in 2011.
This scenario of rising unemployment, low job creation, high labor informality and employment deficit with respect to the pandemic constitutes a serious situation that can be classified as a labor emergency in the region.
The problem is that with the low dynamism that the labor market currently exhibits, there is no hope of overcoming the situation in the short term. The region needs an additional push in terms of employment, the inertia of economic growth alone will not be enough, it requires public policies focused on groups and areas lagging behind in employment, and also local policies that allow for the generation of more jobs. in the short term, and strategies to encourage formal employment in the medium and long term that help combat this emergency.
Labor informality is a national problem, and more serious in La Araucanía, which exceeds national informal employment by 10 percentage points (pp.). The challenge for the region of La Araucanía is enormous in terms of employment, and to the extent that the local labor market does not rebound significantly, it will be difficult to expect substantive improvements in future poverty levels, where the region has also led for many years. the country figures, this is because one of the main vehicles to overcome poverty is employment.
