Employment: How has the situation of Peruvians in Lima changed in recent months?

Government expectations for this year show that Peru’s employment rate will recover to pre-pandemic levels, but how labor market in Lima, a city with almost 30% of the population?

Metropolitan Lima had a total of 5,87,700 employees registered from April to June, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI). Although the figure is higher than what was recorded before the pandemic, this is not entirely positive.

INEI data show that out of 100 people in the country, 93 have Work and of these, 52 have adequate employment and 41 face underemployment.

The rate of adequately employed or formal workers is still 9.7% lower than in 2019, while underemployment, characterized by a lack of work benefits, continues to rise.

It is expected that by June Lime there were about 2,242,000 part-time workers, meaning they work fewer hours than usual and/or have wages below the legal minimum.

Is underemployment equal to informal employment? Development Research Network (Redes) Economist Monica Muñoz Najar points out that informality is when a person works for a company that does not pay taxes to Sunat or has no access to insurance, while a part-time person may be hired in official company but work more than 35 hours a week and/or earn less than the minimum wage.

The underemployed population, which registers a lower income, that is, earns less than the minimum wage, is 1,581,200 people.

According to the ERI, this figure is 41.7% higher than what was recorded before pandemic COVID-19.

This type of underemployment due to lack of income is more common in women and people aged 25 to 44.

In addition, it also has a high prevalence in Business belonging to the sectors of trade and services, since they have about 184 thousand and 164 thousand partially employed. There are 68,000 part-time employees registered in the Manufacturing category, and about 38,000 registered in the Construction category.

Unemployment

Regarding the unemployment rate, INEI indicates that the rate has been reduced to 6.8%, that is, there are 370,000 people in Lima actively looking for work.

This figure is much lower than recorded in recent years, as in 2021 unemployment it rose to 10.3% and reached 16.3% in 2020.

However, the unemployment rate during this period is still higher than recorded before the pandemic, since in 2019 the rate was only 6.3%.

How much do Peruvians earn in Lima?

INEI data shows that the average income of Peruvian workers in Lima from April to June was S$1,667.2.

This amount is 6.3% higher than what was recorded between April and June 2021, but still 2% lower than employees earned in 2019.

It is worth noting that the number remuneration The average varies depending on the level of education and occupation of the worker.

The ERI shows that the highest incomes are received by the population with higher education, which earns 2.5 times more than those employed with primary or less education, 2 times more than the income of the population with secondary education and 1.7 times more than income of an employee with a non-university higher education.

In the case of employment items, salary The highest figures are registered in the construction sector, where they earn an average of about SGD 1,859.6 per month. While the lowest wages are recorded in the trade sector, the average wage here is SGD 1,263.1 per month.