numbers for Latin America
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Latin America’s unemployment rate has hit a record high, its economies will shrink more than expected this year, and they will make a smaller-than-expected rebound in 2017, a series of dismal figures showed Wednesday.
Heavy job losses in Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, pushed the region’s unemployment rate to 8.1 per cent in 2016, an increase of 1.5 percentage points, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report.
That was the highest level since region-wide data tracking began a decade ago.
“These levels were not seen even during the international financial crisis of 2008-2009,” the ILO said.
Latin America’s economies are meanwhile set to shrink by 1.1 per cent in 2016, followed by modest growth of 1.3 per cent in 2017, a United Nations panel said in a separate report.
Both figures were revised downward by 0.2 percentage points from previous forecasts in October.
Deep recessions in Brazil and fellow heavyweights Argentina and Venezuela are dragging down the region, said the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We are at a turning point. Latin America and the Caribbean will resume growth but moderately, and without clear engines driving it,” said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena.
“Recovery will be fragile as long as the uncertainties of the economic context continue, particularly the recently observed protectionist trends.”
Venezuela will shrink 9.7 per cent this year, Brazil 3.6 per cent, and Argentina and Ecuador two per cent, ECLAC forecast.
But Mexico, the region’s second-largest economy after Brazil, will grow two per cent, it said.
Booming just several years ago, Latin America has been hit hard by the global commodity price plunge, sapping the resource-rich region’s chief exports.
Brazil is struggling through its worst recession in decades.
Its economic slide has been exacerbated by a huge corruption scandal at State oil company Petrobras and a political crisis that culminated in the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in August.
Brazil’s unemployment rate rose by nearly three percentage points this year, to 11.3 per cent.
Across the region, there are some 25 million unemployed people, up five million from 2015, the ILO said.
Unemployment is set to rise again next year to 8.4 per cent, it said.
