Jobs, between the challenges and uncertainties of this 2024

Panama will end 2023 with an unemployment rate of 7.4%, which will be affected by the cancellation of the contract for Minera Panamá SA’s Cobre Panamá project, said the head of labor and labor development, Doris Zapata.

Figures updated by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) up to August 2023 were 2,094,241 persons, representing 62.4% of the population aged 15 and over.

The unemployment rate decreased by 2.5 percentage points compared to April 2022, that is, from 9.9% to 7.4%; while the number of employees increased by 92,253 people.

However, Zapata estimates the impact that the closure of the mining project will have on the unemployment level at 2%, with the loss of around 4,500 jobs.

The issue of unemployment became topical in the midst of the debate on the minimum wage that was supposed to come into force in Panama this January.

In view of this, the National Council of Private Enterprise (Conep) argued before the National Minimum Wage Commission that the population employed in the category of private companies had a notorious stagnation, with a downward trend in the last 10 years, starting from a level of 785,636 employed in 2013. to 770,255 in 2023,

For the business community, the unemployment rate is still above that of the year before the pandemic, at around 155,626 people in August 2023, equivalent to 7.4% compared to 146,111, a rate of 7.1%, a figure which according to the business sector it is very worrying, especially since half of it is young population.

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7.4%

The unemployment rate in Panama is estimated at the end of 2023.

4500

the closure of the Cobre Panamá project adds to the number of unemployed, following the Supreme Court of Justice ruling.

Conep went further, analyzing the situation of the economically inactive population, which in the period from 2018 to 2023 grew 4 times more than the economically active population. The economically inactive population increased from 1,051,467 to 1,260,543, with an increase of 20%, while the economically active population increased from 1,986,940 to 2,094,241 with an increase of 4.5%, Conep said.

In their analysis, business associations highlight the increase in the share of the economically inactive population in the productive age of 20 to 59, while the share of the non-economically active population that does not plan to look for work in the next six months is nine times higher. greater than what makes plans to look for work, document details.

Conep believes that there are more and more people who have never worked than those who have worked within the economically inactive population who plan to look for a job in the next six months.

For the head of Labor, the expectations for the first months of this year are high, especially for the tourism sector, however, the business sector notices a weakening of its financial capacity, which reduces not only the employment capacity, but also faces higher wage growth. financial reality.

The six sectors that employ the most in the national economy show a deterioration in the level of net taxable income of legal entities by 2022 compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019, with a negative increase, Conep pointed out.

Conep also warns of a rigid structural trend in the labor market that was deepened by the crisis caused by the blockade and protests in the most dynamic quarter of the economy, which predicts a negative trend for 2024.