The economic upturn in most Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2010 fueled a .6 percentage point drop in unemployment – from 8.1% in 2009 to 7.5% - and is expected to lead to a further decrease of between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points this year, the United Nations reported today.
Issued by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UN International Labor Organization (ILO), the study noted that international trade and financial conditions, as well as the upturn in domestic demand resulting from macroeconomic policy, generated economic growth of around 6 per cent for the region in 2010.
The recovery has fuelled the generation of formal employment, a rise in the employment rate, a fall in joblessness and a moderate increase in real wages, it added, but the performance of different countries and sub-regions has been very uneven.
On the one hand, high economic growth in Brazil has been accompanied by the vigorous creation of formal jobs and the unemployment rate has dropped to levels not seen in a long time. Other countries in South America have benefited from strong demand for natural resources from Asian countries. Combined with higher domestic demand, this has raised their economic growth rates and had a positive impact on employment indicators.
On the other hand, the recovery is still very weak in certain countries and sub-regions, particularly in the Caribbean, with employment indicators continuing to worsen.
This year the region overall is expected to register a 4.8 per cent rise in per capita gross domestic product (GDP).