Dominican Republic was one of the countries with the highest employment growth

According to the research, at the country level, the information available for the first half of 2024 indicates that employment increased in 11 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, where increases in employment of more than 4% in Bolivia (4.7), Chile (4.6) and the Dominican Republic (5.7) stand out, as well as decreases of more than 1% in Costa Rica and Peru.

“Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Peru experienced a contraction,” he says.

In Bolivia, Chile and the Dominican Republic, growth rates represented an increase of more than 4 percentage points compared to those of the first half of 2023, it says.

ECLAC indicates that at the sectoral level, in 2024 there was an increase in the number of employed people in the industrial and service sectors, with rates of 2.3% and 2.0%, respectively, while employment in the agricultural sector contracted by 1.3%.

“Employment in the industrial sector increased in 11 of the 15 countries with available data, with increases of more than 5 per cent in Bolivia, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic, and declines of more than 4 per cent in Argentina and Trinidad and Tobago. It should be noted that this growth in industrial employment represented an acceleration in the rate, with an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to that of 2023 and 0.7 percentage points compared to that recorded in 2019,” it adds.

It specifies that the activity with the greatest dynamism in terms of employment was the generation of basic services, which grew by 5.5% in the first half of the year.