The National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) presented the results of the Colombian labor market by March 2025, revealing a significant decrease in the unemployment rate.
The figures showed an unemployment of 9.6 % in March 2025, which is a reduction of 1.7 points compared to the registration of the same month of 2024. According to the director of the DANE, Piedad Urdinola, the rate of 9.6 % is the smallest registered for a month of March since 2017.
Thus, the employed population reached 23.7 million people, which is an increase in more than one million people compared to March 2024. Compared to February 2025, there were 233,000 additional occupied people.
On the other hand, the unemployed population in March 2025 was 2.5 million people which meant a 182,000 decrease against February.
The most and less in employment generation
The economic branches that most promoted the increase in occupation between March 2024 and 2025 were:
- Agriculture, Livestock, Hunting, Silviculture and Fisheries (+381 thousand employed)
- Manufacturing industries (+218 thousand employed)
- Accommodation and food services (+153 thousand employed)
On the other hand, some economic activities reported job losses:
- Public Administration and Defense, Education and Human Health Care (-153 thousand)
- Financial and insurance activities (-71 thousand)
Now, with respect to the occupational position, the “self -employed workers” (+621 thousand) and the “workers, private employees” (+184 thousand) were the ones that most added to the employed population. On the other hand, the “Government’s employee” classification registered a decrease of 74 thousand employed.
This is where you could talk about a mole in unemployment figures. More than half of the employment’s gain corresponded to self -employed workers. This leads to an increase in contracts for services, the search for lack of job opportunities in the private sector and, therefore, the possibility that a good part of the employment generated is more informal.
Related news :