Economic slowdown threatens LatAm job market: int'l labor body

Economic slowdown is threatening the employment outlook in Latin American countries and increasing inequality, the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned on Tuesday.

"The alarm bells are ringing, the economic slowdown will affect the region's labor markets in 2016 and over the next few years," ILO Regional Director Jose Manuel Salazar said in a press release.

The ILO's latest report on Latin America and the Caribbean calls on governments to re-orient labor policies to increase productivity and address rising unemployment.

"What we are talking about are effective solutions," said Salazar. "The so-called active labor market policies represent a policy shift that seeks to improve and update the skills of the labor force, re-adjust labor supply and demand, and promote productive employment."

This integrated approach is what labor markets in the region need but have not put into practice, according to the ILO.

"Training programs, employment subsidies and programs to support self-employment and micro-entrepreneurship have shown positive results in the region," it added.

However, only a few countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Chile, have invested in active labor market policies at levels comparable to high-income countries. Other countries in the region have no such policies or spend too little on them.

In addition, wage rise in Latin America has stagnated at around 0.3 percent and inequality has worsened in eight of 13 countries studied.

The report noted that since 2012, regional gross domestic product has trended downward, even contracting in 2015, and the recession and protracted slowdown have already started to weigh heavily on employment.

The region's unemployment rate grew for the second year in a row in 2015, reaching 6.5 percent. Endi