UN agencies predict slightly rising unemployment in Latin America in 2015

Two United Nations specialized agencies predicted Wednesday the unemployment in Latin America is expected to go up slightly this year due to a lackluster economic outlook.

Estimates released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), based in Santiago, Chile, and the International Labour Organization (ILO) showed regional economic performance is likely to prompt a slight increase in the unemployment rate, from the 6 percent registered in 2014 to 6.2 percent this year.

According to the latest edition of the ECLAC-ILO joint publication "The Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean," the region's expected 1 percent economic growth "will not be enough to reverse the deceleration process that began in 2011."

This stagnation in the per capita gross domestic product " should weaken labour demand and, therefore, the creation of salaried employment ... for a third consecutive year."

"The labour market situation in 2015 is not expected to be particularly conducive to progress in reducing poverty and inequality," ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena and ILO Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Elizabeth Tinoco said in the prologue to the report.

The agencies acknowledged that during most of the last decade and the beginning of this decade, Latin America made important advances in poverty reduction and income distribution, though growing inequality dogged the region, as it has in other parts of the world.

Many factors helped cut poverty and redistribute the wealth, including the "robust" creation of formal jobs, and public policies that raised the minimum wage and expanded social welfare programs, the agencies noted.

"Universalizing social protection is essential to helping build societies where equality is the end-goal of development strategies, " the agencies concluded. Endite