ILO Report: Precarious Employment Affects LatAm Panorama

Lima, Jan 14. -Informality surrounding precarious work and over-exploitation is one of the key elements that stand out in the annual report of the International Labor Organization on Latin America.The 2011 report said that the worst hit sectors by unemployment or underemployment are young people and women.The document was filed in the Peruvian capital -ILO regional venue- and reflects a reduction of 6.8 percent in the urban unemployment rate, a situation likely to prevail this year because of the predictable regional economic deceleration.

At the same time, the report points out the need to improve job quality and considers imperative to analyze situations such as young people unemployment, informality, low coverage of social security and the necessity to face rural poverty with work.

ILO regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean Elizabeth Tinoco said the region should "go for working markets generating not only more jobs but better jobs."

The report presented by Tonoco says the Latin American urban unemployment rate reached up to 6.8 percent in 2011, compared to 7.3 percent in 2010.

Tinoco admitted that means 15.4 million people are unemployed, and the juvenile urban unemployment (people from 15 to 24 years of age) reaches 14.9 percent.

"The economic and social progress will not be sustainable if the political challenge to generate better chances for young people is not decisively taken," Tinoco said.

Besides, there is the problem of informality. Fifty percent of the urban occupied population -93 million men and women- has an informal job. That implies precarious working conditions, without social protection or access to working rights, and low incomes often below the minimum wage.

Sixty million people are working in productive units which are not legally registered, 23 million have no social protection, even they are working in the formal sector, and 10 million work in the domestic service.

The problem is much more serious among young people: 60 percent of them can only accede to informal jobs.

The situation among women is also serious, since the unemployment rate among women is 8.3 percent, compared to 5.9 percent among men.

"It is important to put employment as a priority in the macroeconomic policies. Decent job generation is an essential component of growth, a matchless tool in the struggle against poverty and inequality," said Tinoco.

Taking into account the economic uncertainty, the need to work in such a direction is urgent because of the effects that a new recession might have on the world market. (Prensa Latina)