QCOSTARICA – Unemployment in Costa Rica is going down little by little, reported the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC) – the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses – on Thursday, June 3.
Between February and April of this year – the last period analyzed – there were 422,000 people without a job, while between January and March there were 458,000 unemployed.
In this statistic, women are the most affected since 23 out of 100 do not have a job, while it is 12 out of 100 for men.
María Luz Sanarrusia, coordinator of the Continuous Employment Survey (ECE), says that this year also reflects a recovery in employment, the employed population is 2.02 million. Of course, it remains below the level reported in 2019 and early 2020, prior to the pandemic.
“The employment rate reaches 50%, which is a pretty good level, compared to the previous quarters. This means that out of every 100 people of working age, 50 are employed,” explained Sanarrusia.
The pandemic is the main reason for the high unemployment in the country. The ECE shows that 419,000 people of who are without work (“brete” in Spanish) recognized an affectation of the health crisis in their search for a job.
