Costa Rica’s open unemployment rate continues to decline and stands at 7.9 percent, according to the Continuous Employment Survey (ECE), for the November-January quarter.
That means 3.8 percentage points less than in the same quarter of the previous year, the data of the study of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, presented at a press conference from the Presidential House by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Andrés Romero, specify.
In terms of gender, the unemployment rate among women showed a significant decrease of 6.1 percentage points to close by 9.1 per cent, while for men it closed at 7.3 per cent.
This is a decrease in the unemployed population from 287 thousand 321 in 2022/2023 to 182 thousand 819 in 2023/2024, a difference of 105 thousand fewer unemployed people.
In addition, the employed population did not show significant variations, leaving 2.1 million people, consisting of 1.33 million men and 791 thousand women.
In terms of job quality, there are some figures showing an improvement, for example, the percentage of people with underemployment fell by 4.7 percentage points and stood at 3.8 per cent. Formal employment rose from 57 per cent to 62.5 per cent year-on-year, or 5.5 percentage points more.
On the other hand, some economic activities have positive variations, for example: teaching and health (short more than 37 thousand), and public administration (about 25.5 thousand).
We continue to see a significant correlation in terms of people’s education and their level of employability, so strategies such as Brete (Labour) aim to improve the employability of people, technical and educational skills, Romero explained.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in El Pais