MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Slight unemployment drop reported in Uruguay

Labor Minister Pieres spoke of “positive expectations”

Uruguay's unemployment rate was reported Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE) to have stood at 7.8% in the month of October, a slight decrease from September's 8.3%.

 The agency also said the activity rate stood at 62.1% and the employment rate at 57.2%, another slight increase from the previous figure of 56.8%.

Unemployment remained higher inland (8.3%) than in Montevideo (7.1%) and the employment rate was better in the country's capital (58.6%) than in the rest of the territory (56.4%).

“On the other hand, when observing the characteristics of employed people, it is estimated that 8.2% are underemployed, while the non-registration to social security for the main job is at 20.5%,” the INE pointed out.

“The data we have today indicates that unemployment in 2022 has been placed one point below 2019”, Labor Minister Pablo Mieres underlined.

“If we take as a reference the previous years, leaving aside the pandemic years that had very strong peculiarities and very strong affectations, the data we have today indicates that unemployment in 2022 has been located one point below 2019, which was the year prior to the pandemic,” Mieres explained.

“That speaks well of the performance of the labor market since they are all encouraging data,” he added.

“Hopefully, it is the beginning of a new process of upward momentum because the labor market at the end of last year had a boost, then it was stabilized and now it seems to resume from that plateau a new growth momentum that leaves us with positive expectations,” he went on.