Education, Gender and Economic Activity in Informal Work. Some Aspects.

According to recent official information on the Colombian working population and the unemployed population, there are 23.4 million Colombians working and 2.5 million unemployed, so the unemployment rate for the month of august is 9.7%. This rate is higher than that of the same month of the previous year when it reached 9.3%.

It should be noted that the unemployment rate mentioned is calculated as follows: the labor force is the total population that is capable of working, which in august reached 25.9 million, of which 23.4 million are working and 2.5 million are unemployed, as mentioned before. To calculate the unemployment rate, the number of the unemployed population is divided by the labor force population, which results in 9.7% for august.

In turn, the working population can be divided between the population with formal employment and the population with informal employment. The first of these are made up of 10.3 million workers and the second 13.1 million of them, which is equivalent to 56% of workers being informal. But at the city level, Bogotá, Medellín and Cali have lower levels of informality than other cities such as Cúcuta, Montería, Valledupar, Riohacha, Valledupar, Santa Marta and Sincelejo.

Looking at workers by sex (the official source uses the results for the june - august quarter) in this quarter the total working population reached 23.2 million, where men registered 13.6 million and women the rest 9.6 million. Within this classification, informal work for men reached 7.8 million and for women 5.1 million, that is, 57% for men and 53% for women.

Another topic included is that of workers classified by education levels, which shows that the population with formal employment has secondary, middle, technical and university levels in a number of 9 million and with primary level (including those with no education) 1.2 million; but it is different from the case of informal workers where 7.2 million have secondary to university and in contrast 5.8 million only have primary or no education.

It is pertinent to note that when observing by university education levels, in the formal sector there are 3.2 million workers with that condition while in the informal sector only 0.8 million.

Regarding the linked workers according to the classification by branches of activity, it is recorded that for the total number of workers those belonging to commerce occupy the first place with 4 million, followed by those in agriculture 3.3 million, public administration 2.8 million and then industry 2.5 million.

In turn, when observing formal workers, it is found that those linked to public administration occupy the first place with 2.4 million, followed by commerce and industry with 1.6 million and 1.3 million respectively, and in agriculture only 0.4 million.

On the other hand, among informal workers, the first place is occupied by those linked to agriculture with 2.9 million, followed by those in commerce with 2.4 million, entertainment activities with 1.5 million, and accommodation and food services with 1.3 million.

Other observations of the results presented for august by the official source are the following.

Public policy should concentrate on the cities with the highest informality that were mentioned above, since department capitals such as Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali have less informality.

The connection of women to work is another aspect to emphasize in public policies to reduce the gap with men. In both cases, it is necessary to reduce informality.

For the policies of formalization of informal work, a public and private policy is required relative to increasing formal jobs in agriculture and in commerce, sectors where informality abounds, and to implement higher levels of education in the informal population that works in these sectors.

In sectors such as public administration, which has a good part of the formal workers, cases of overcrowding must be evaluated and refined, and in their replacement in the industrial sector, a call must be made to the private sector to generate formal jobs and to hire from informal employment within a required acceleration of its productive activity that has been lagging.

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Today ( wednesday 16) in terms of global markets, stock markets are growing due to positive economic performances in inflation and interest rates in the United States and Europe.

The price of oil is slightly down in line with the market's perception of a lower risk of an escalation of the Israel Iran conflict. WTI and BRENT are trading at 70.1 and 74 dollars per barrel respectively.

In Colombia, at the start of the day, the peso is slightly devalued at 4.270 per dollar compared to a TRM for today of 4.266.2.