The youth unemployment rate remains critical, reaching 12.5%, almost three times the rate for adults,» stated Gerson Martínez, a labor economics specialist at the ILO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, during a video conference, he indicated that youth unemployment is combined with «high levels of informality,» which reaches 56% among young people, while among adults it was 42.8%. The report, titled ‘Labor Panorama 2025 Latin America and the Caribbean,’ points to a sustained decline in the number of young people who are neither studying nor working for pay, a trend that has particularly accelerated in the post-pandemic period, especially among young women. On the other hand, although recent indicators show somewhat more favorable trends in female employment, this convergence is advancing at «an insufficient pace» and gender gaps persist. In the first half of 2025, the male participation rate was 75% and the female rate was almost 53%, while employment was 71% and 49%, respectively. The report details that the 1 percentage point increase in the average employment rate between 2019 and 2025 in the region is explained by 0.7 points for men and 1.4 points for women. «Although this convergence constitutes a significant advance, it is still insufficient to close the structural gender differences,» said Martínez when referring to the need to overcome gender stereotypes so that more women are employed in paid work, which also has great potential in the economies of the countries. Stable Growth The ILO indicated that Latin America and the Caribbean registered its third consecutive year of stable growth in 2025, with a GDP expansion of 2.4%, similar to that of 2024, but below the world average (3.2%). Consequently, labor indicators also showed a trend of moderate growth and relative stability. The labor participation rate was 63.3%, with almost no change from 2024, while the employment rate was 59.6%, 0.4% higher than last year. In this sense, and added to a greater demand for employment, the region registered an unemployment rate of 5.8% in the first half of 2025, the lowest in recent records and which confirms the post-pandemic recovery, «although they do not imply substantial advances in structural terms».
«Youth unemployment is ‘critical’ in Latin America and the Caribbean, warns the ILO» — this news was first published in La Verdad Panamá.
