Economic Activities in Colombia. Some Observations on Formal and Informal Work.

Commerce and agriculture are the sectors with the most workers.

The total number of workers in Colombia according to official sources is 22.0 million (m) as of january 2.023, of which 3.9 m are mainly located in commerce, 3.2 m in agriculture, 2.4 m in public administration and 2.4 m in industry. Excluding public administration in the other three sectors, 9.5 m are grouped together, almost 50% of the total workers.

These four sectors in terms of formal and informal work present the following results on the average for the quarter november 2.023 to january 2.024. In commerce, 2.3 m are informal workers and 1.7 m are formal workers. In Agriculture 2.8 m are informal and 0.5 m are formal. In public administration, 0.3 m are informal and 2.3 are formal, and in industry, 1 m are informal and 1.3 m are formal.

Excluding public administration in the other three sectors, the number of informal workers is 6.1 m, which represents 48.4% of the country's total.

With the above, it is observed that almost 50% of Colombian workers are located in commerce, agriculture and industry, which are the sectors that produce goods for the country and where the private sector is the owner in those activities and therefore in generating the jobs.

But also, at the same time, about half of the jobs in these three sectors are informal jobs, which is why the country requires the generation or conversion of these informal jobs into formal jobs by that private sector.

For its part, the construction sector also groups 1.6 m workers, of which 1 m are informal.

Other sectors such as financial, professional and artistic activities contain respectively 0.5 m, 1.9 m and 2 m of formal and informal workers, all below the number contained in the "real" sectors of the economy such as the main ones mentioned above. However, these activities belong to the "services" sector with a greater part of private entities that must also generate formal jobs and avoid informality.

The participation of the public sector is done through public administration workers (includes defense) who, as mentioned at the beginning, are 2.6 million workers (in the november-january quarter), mostly formal, but these state jobs are a minority with respect to other workers belonging to the private sector.

But the call to generate formal jobs is the private sector, especially in labor intensive sectors that are highly informal, such as agriculture and commerce, and also the generation of job sources in industry, a sector that remains behind in jobs and productive activity.

The production of goods and their exports depend on greater productive activity of the private sector with investments and technological innovations for greater productive efficiency with the reduction of costs and therefore prices to be competitive.

Peasant work

Of the total number of workers in the country, which in the november - january quarter is 22.5 m, the peasant population represents 6.3 m or 28% according to official information.

Of that number, 2.7 m, 43%, are in agriculture, followed by commerce at a distance, 0.7 m, artistic activities, 0.5 m, and construction, 0.4 m.

Another characteristic is that 3.3 million peasant workers work on their own account (52% of the total) and 1.6 million as private employees and 0.7 million as day laborers.

As expected, the peasant population works mainly in agriculture, but also as mentioned above, agriculture is highly informal, and peasants are included there working on their own account.

Informal work

In Colombia, according to the latest official information, in the november - january quarter, informal work is 55.7% of the total number of workers, a figure that has decreased compared to a year ago from 57.7% but is high compared to OECD countries, since according to the information from this organization, Colombia occupies first place in informality, followed by Mexico 30.5%, Greece 30%, Turkey 30%, Costa Rica 26.6%, South Korea 24.6% and Chile 24.8%. Of this group of countries, those that are better off are the United States 6.3%, Norway 6.5%, Canada 8.6% and Luxembourg 9.4%.

Other South American countries such as Peru have the highest informality at 65% and another such as Brazil is lower at 35%. The Central American countries Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala have informality of around 65%.

Colombia is lagging behind in informality compared to its economic peers such as Mexico and Chile, although it is better than Peru.