Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is a twice-yearly report prepared jointly by the Economic Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Office for the Southern Cone of Latin America of the International Labour Organization (ILO).The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic hit Latin America and the Caribbean in a period of economic weakness and macroeconomic vulnerability. Against this backdrop, the COVID-19 pandemic, which brings with it a combination of external and domestic shocks, will result in the region's worst economic and social crisis in decades, with damaging effects on employment, the fight against poverty and the reduction of inequality.Along with labour market dynamics, this report examines some of the policies implemented by countries to protect formal and informal employment, income and the production sector. It also analyses the labour challenges related to the reactivation of production in a post-pandemic world. A policy framework prioritizing workplace health and safety is therefore of the essence.

A region known for its volatility, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has suffered severe economic and social setbacks from crises—including the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises have taken their toll on careers, wage growth, and productivity. Employment in Crisis: The Path to Better Jobs in a Post-COVID-19 Latin America provides new evidence on the effects of crises on the region’s workers and firms and suggests several policy responses that can bolster long-term and inclusive economic growth. This report has three key findings. First, crises lead to persistent employment losses and accelerate structural changes away from the formal sector. This change occurs more through reductions in the creation of formal jobs than through job destruction. Second, some workers recover from crises, while others are permanently scarred by them. Low-skilled workers can suffer up to a decade of lower earnings caused by crises, while high-skilled workers rebound fast, exacerbating the LAC region’s high level of inequality. Formal workers suffer smaller employment and wage losses in localities with higher rates of informality. And the reduced job flows caused by crises decrease welfare, but workers in localities with more job opportunities, whether formal or informal, bounce back better. Third, crises’ cleansing effects can increase efficiency and productivity, but these effects are dampened by the LAC region’s less competitive market structure. Rather than becoming more agile and productive during economic downturns, protected sectors and firms gain market share and crowd out others, trapping valuable resources. This report proposes a three-pronged mix of policies to improve the LAC region’s responses to crises: •Create a more stable macroeconomic environment to smooth the impacts of crises, including automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance and short-term compensation programs; •Increase the capacity of social protection and labor programs to respond to crises and coalesce these programs into systems that complement income support with reemployment assistance and reskilling opportunities; and •Tackle structural issues, including the lack of product market competition and the spatial dimension behind poor labor market adjustment—a “good jobs and good firms†? agenda.

Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is a twice-yearly report prepared jointly by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Office for the Southern Cone of Latin America of the International Labour Organization (ILO).In its last edition, the two United Nations organizations analyze the effects of the crisis caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the region's labour markets during 2020 and 2021, and they stress the importance of the policies implemented by countries to mitigate this impact. According to the report, in 2021 the recovery in employment and job creation has been partial and slower than the reactivation in economic activity. Although it is forecast that the region will end this year with 5.9% economic growth, this will not be enough to return to the level of Gross Domestic Product or employment recorded in 2019. Therefore, labour markets will have experienced their second year of unprecedented crisis.

The crisis caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had severe repercussions on the region's economy and labour markets in 2020. The year ended with a 7.1% decline in GDP, which translated into a sharp drop in employment and an increase in the unemployment rate, to 10.5%. Unlike in previous crises, withdrawal from the labour market was high, primarily in the second quarter of 2020, and the contraction in informal employment was greater than that of formal employment. With the gradual easing of lockdown measures, labour force participation has picked up and employment is recovering slowly, although the unemployment rate and levels of precariousness will remain high in 2021.The pandemic has highlighted the need for the inclusive use of new technologies to generate jobs. The second part of this report analyses the main characteristics of work on digital platforms, the impact of the pandemic on this type of work and some considerations for the design of appropriate regulatory frameworks.

Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is a twice-yearly report prepared jointly by the Economic Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Office for the Southern Cone of Latin America of the International Labour Organization (ILO).The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented crisis in the region's economies and in its labour markets, where the recovery has been slow, partial and uneven. However, as noted in the first part of this report, there were favourable changes in the main indicators of these markets in the first half of 2022. First, in the second quarter of 2022, the employment rate returned to the level seen before the crisis and the unemployment rate fell 2.8 percentage points compared to the year-earlier period to 7.3%, lower than the pre-pandemic level. Similarly, the participation rate improved, although it is still below the level seen prior to the health crisis. Beyond the difficulties posed by the current labour market situation, the region's economies face the challenge of reversing the weak growth in productivity and investment registered since the debt crisis.

This book estimates how crises change labor market flows, assesses how these changes affect people, and discusses the key policy responses.