MSG159G/01E LATIN AMERICA: Over 80 Percent of New Jobs in Informal Sector

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Nov 17 1994 (IPS) - Experts at the Latin American Economic System (SELA) meeting in Venezuela on Thursday said that the economic growth of this decade has increased social polarisation, with 83 percent of new jobs occuring in the informal sector.

Some 200 delegates met in Caracas this week to discuss the three main issues of the United Nations Social Summit meeting – the reduction and erradication of poverty, the generation of employment and social integration – which will be used to draw up a plan of action to meet commitments made at the meeting.

The Permanent Secretary of SELA, Salvador Arriola, called for social equity in development, explaining that Latin America was going backwards, with even countries showing low inflation and industrial growth suffering open or veiled unemployment.

Daniel Martinez, International Labour Organisation (ILO) coordinator, calculated that regional urban unemployment would be 7.5 percent by the end of 1994, with young people making up 50 percent of the jobless, and women 10 to 20 percent less employed than men.

During the 1990-93 period, he said, employment increased at three percent per year, but eight of every 10 new jobs were in the informal sector, meaning poor quality jobs, continuing stagnation of the productive sector, and increasing pressure on the traditional victims of unemployment – women and children.

Peru’s delegate, Carlos Franco, said that neoliberal adjustment policies, imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank after the foreign debt crisis of the 1980’s, had brought economic growth, but benefits had not “trickled down” to the poor, resulting in greater polarisation between rich and poor.

Julio Botvinik, of the College of Mexico, said that economic development is increasingly dependent on technological innovation, demanding the skills of only the highly trained and relegating the rest of humanity to the “limits of alimentary survival,” as the battle to lower budgets forces governments to cut social spending.

In addition, the regulation of social welfare systems will move from the national to the international sphere, as has already happened with the economy and the environment, leading to the situation “where the weakest sectors of the population will suffer the most,” Botvinik predicted.