QCOSTARICA – “The Quarterly Index of Economic Activity (ITAE) presents a growth of 1.2% between the second and third quarters of 2022, showing a positive behavior with an upward trend,” says the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy (Mideplan) in the Institutional Bulletin: Analysis of the Development Evolution of Employment in Costa Rica III Quarter 2022.
In the document, which analyzes the data from the Continuous Employment Survey (ECE) corresponding to the III Quarter of 2022, it is explained that this increase is mainly due to the growth of the areas “transportation, storage, communication and other services”, “commerce, hotels and restaurants”, “manufacturing industry”, and “financial and insurance services”.
In general, from the analysis of the statistical data it is concluded that the Costa Rican economic performance shows signs of recovery, since if the interannual behavior of the ITAE is analyzed, the result is an increase of 2.7% when going from a value of 109, 6 in the third quarter of 2021 to 112.5 in the third quarter of 2022.
There is a direct relationship between the increase in production and the growth in employment, which in this same interannual period was 4.5% given by the evolution of employees in the branches: “Manufacturing Industry”, “Commerce, hotels and restaurants” and “Construction and others”, which have increased the number of workers by 44,609, 32,971 and 27,428, respectively.
The Central Region of the country continues to be the one with the most employment options, with an occupancy rate of 56.1%, during the third quarter of 2022; the year-on-year result is a total of 46,958 additional jobs. In contrast, the Brunca region has the lowest employment rate in the country (41.2%); however, it also presented an increase of 4.3 percentage points from the third quarter of 2021 to the third quarter of 2022, reporting an increase of 13,776 employed people.
In the interannual period analyzed, all the planning regions experienced a decrease in their unemployment rates, with the Central Pacific Region showing the lowest unemployment and the Huetar Norte Region experiencing the highest percentage of people who cannot find work.
The report indicates that 51.2% of economically active women are not part of the labor force. The economically active population (EAP) is made up of people of working age (over 15 years of age), this group is made up of 2,058,342 men and 2,049,275 women.
Six out of ten people in this group are in the labor force; that is, they have a job or are looking for one. Of the 39.5% that do not participate in the labor force, 27.9% are men and 51.2% are women. Other data on the population inside and outside the labor force, detailed in the document, is that the unemployment rate in women is higher than in men, with values of 16.5% and 8.9%, respectively.
Source: Revista Summa
