Latin America looking for work

“The formal system in Bolivia is informal and this means that between 75 and 80% of the economy is informal. It is a very high number by international standards,” says Ivan Velasquez, Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung project coordinator in Bolivia and author of the study. The informal economy and informality in a multiethnic society where it also delves into the occurrence of “the urban and rural poverty scenario, high unemployment rates, underemployment, gender inequality, precarious, insecure and poorly paid work”.

Velazquez stresses that “the informal characteristic is the escape to the ability to generate income faster because economic units in this sector are not looking for large sums of money, but are looking for living in the moment.”

Populist rhetoric “to the rescue”
Recovery depends on the measures taken by governments, but in any case there will be marked differences and more inequality that will lead to long-term consequences.

In Colombia, for example, in the midst of an intense election campaign towards the presidential election, opinion polls point to employment as the primary concern of citizens. In this regard, the historic charter candidate, Gustavo Petro, who leads the opinion polls, raises Guaranteed Employment Policy .

In this proposal, it puts the state at the center so that it acts as an employer of last resort, offering basic salary work opportunities to those who can and want to work, but cannot find a way to do so in the private sector. This approach appears to reflect a populist tendency that can have disastrous consequences due to its high costs and potential impact on productivity.

On the other hand, in Argentina, President Alberto Fernandez, who announced his candidacy for re-election this week, eloquently eloquently promoted the revitalization of the economy and goes further: “We have regained work, but we have to recover the salary that fell between 2015 and 2019, and this It requires asking the powerful to properly distribute wealth.” An idea so general that it does not settle into the complex reality of that country.