Regional exports of goods and services contracted in response to sluggish demand on international markets, while remittances and foreign direct investment flows continued to fall, credit lost its buoyancy and the total wage bill diminished, owing mainly to job losses.
As a result, the growth forecasts of many countries had to be adjusted downwards. Since the end of , the countries of the region had started to implement countercyclical policies βalbeit with significant differencesβ in an effort to use public spending to counter flagging investment and consumer-spending levels and boost aggregate demand. In this second bulletin, ECLAC and ILO show how the impact of the crisis has deepened in labour markets in the region in the first half of the year and examine existing options and the outcome of public-infrastructure and emergency employment programmes designed to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the labour market.
The unemployment rate has risen in practically all countries compared with the previous year and this situation worsened further in the second quarter, when urban unemployment exceeded the rate of the corresponding period in by 1 percentage point to stand at 8.
Labour indicators also point to an increase in informality, a decline in employment with social protection and a decrease in full-time employment. Labour-market trends observed in the first half-year, together with the forecast for a 1. This forecast is slightly less pessimistic than the estimate given in the first bulletin; this is attributable to the fall in the participation rate in the first half-year to levels that are expected to remain low for the rest of the year.
Thus, the open urban unemployment figure would increase by 2. In the region, as in the rest of the world, there are signs that the crisis may have reached bottom in the middle of the year. In many countries, production levels have ceased their decline and there are indications of an incipient recovery leading to cautious optimism that there may be a moderate upturn in labour markets in the fourth quarter. The pace of recovery will vary from one country to the next and is expected to be gradual at best.
