11.1%
Latin America unemployment in 2021 forecast is 11.1%, according to the International Labour Organisation, ILO (1)
The report mentions that "since its emergence in December 2019, it has been very clear that the threat posed by COVID-19 to public health would also be a threat to the world of work."
"One of the salient impacts of the COVID-19 crisis has been the worsening of long-standing structural challenges and inequalities in the world of work, undermining recent progress."
On one side, the pandemic has generated bankruptcy, unemployment, and poverty, but on the other hand, one can think about the labor benefits of opening new jobs thanks to the disruptive change of technologies accelerated by quarantines. (3)
The progression of 2021 (first semester) and 2020 after 2019, and the projection for 2021 (second semester) and 2022 show how the shortfall is always positive but will get reduced by the impact of the new normal in labor markets.
D. LEIPZIGER and V. DODEV, in "DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMIC POLICY: SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS" explain this: "It is generally accepted that technological innovation has been at the core of firm-level productivity gains and the economic growth of countries. This general proposition as described by Solow (1956) and enhanced by Romer (1990), Aghion and Howitt (1992), and others, embeds in it the notion that more productive firms will displace less productive ones in a Schumpeterian fashion"... "The exponential rise in economic growth since the second industrial revolution and the massive increase in living standards serve as a historical testament to the importance of technological innovation".
"We have seen technology’s important role in the catch-up of emerging market economies (EMEs) with advanced economies, notably in the case of the high-growth East Asian economies (Leipziger, 1993). This was largely done through learning and absorbing technologies from abroad, along with successful resource mobilization and the building up of human and physical capital (Yusuf, 2012)." (2)
Route Map for Latin America
Reforming the State by introducing technological change in the after pandemics is the socially responsible thing to do. Running effective social protection programs implies one dimension that for the poorest people is key, time is their most valuable asset.
For Latin America, the debate should not be posted on social benefits that require long queues for receiving subsidized services. Effective governments should cooperate with private corporations and academia for building up socio-technological advances.
Technology frees us, by replacing low organizational intelligence with the help of artificial intelligence. It is always good to gain insight and free-up time via connectivity to benefit optimal usage of scarce human time.
The public sector, more than ever, should free us to be able to recover time for leisure or work. That's how it is. We lack hours to do everything we want to do when we want to serve. It hurts a lot to waste time.
Money and employment come and go, but time only goes and goes ...
(1) ILO Flagship Report: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_795453.pdf
(2) http://growthdialogue.org/growthdialog/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Working-Paper-Disruptive-Tech.pdf
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