Unemployment in Chile

Chile is a South American country. The country’s economy has had some significant economic growth over the last few years. With the growth in economy, inflation rates have also reduced. These two aspects have contributed to reduced unemployment levels in the country. On average, the country is now experiencing unemployment levels of slightly more than 6%.

Economic Growth and Unemployment in Chile

When The University of Chile conducted a study of the country’s economy, David Bravo noted that Chile was experiencing full employment. Bravo is an economist at the university. He went on to explain what full employment means. It is not the same as having zero unemployment in a country but having a significantly small number of unemployed people. It means a country has a high number of employed people who are easily sustainable by the labour demand. Moreover, this sustainability does not affect the country’s inflation. Some of the economic sectors that greatly contribute to Chile’s economic growth are construction and industry.

Unfortunately, the employment levels in these sectors were not proportionate to the growth levels. Actually, these sectors have had the highest unemployment levels. The reason for this contrast can be attributed to use of machines in these sectors. A single machine is able to handle the work doable by many men within a short time.

Distribution of Unemployment in Chile

Another aspect noted during the different studies of the Chile economy is that agriculture in the country has a high demand for labour. However, the supply of this labour is quite low. Could be most job seekers do not appreciate agriculture related jobs. In terms of gender, many women in the country have been seeking jobs and this is a better situation that it used to be in the past. However, there are still disparities in the employment levels across genders. Female unemployment levels are still higher than the male unemployment levels.

Unemployment levels are also variable with the different areas of the country. For instance, the greatest percentage of Chilean labour force is within the metropolitan area of Santiago. With this concentration of a labour force, the unemployment level is quite high as well as being more than 7%. Worse even, this level of unemployment keeps on increasing over time. Considering a national wide unemployment rate of 6%, 7% is quite a high rate. The unemployment situation is worst in the Bio area where the rate of unemployment is more than 8%.

The Chilean labour force situation shows that having steady growth of employment is important towards having low levels of unemployment. However, the challenge is in having uniform distribution of these rates.