September 3, 2021
According to DANE, at the national level, the month of July 2021 ended with an employed population
of 20.9 million people, which represented an increase of 16.2% compared to
July 2020. Adding the 13 cities and metropolitan areas of the country, the contribution was
9.9 percentage points to the national variation, as its employed population
went from 8.5 million people to 10.3 million between June of last year and
June of this year.
By gender, according to data provided by DANE, there was an increase of 23% in
the total number of employed women between June of last year and July of this year,
an increase that was 12.3% in the case of employed men.
By age, the largest increase in employed persons occurred among people aged 25 to 54
years, with 1.8 million more employed, of which 792 thousand were men and 1
million were women.
In this regard, in July 2021, for that age range, the unemployment rate for
women was 17.2%, compared to 9.8% for men. Conversely, for the
unemployed aged 55 or older, that rate was higher for men than for women,
according to DANE.
It is worth noting that in the 13 cities and metropolitan areas, the trade and
vehicle repair sector registered the largest increase in the employed population,
contributing 4.3 percentage points to the variation in that geographic area.
The number of employed private employees increased by 1.7 million
people, compared to 1.1 million in the case of self-employed workers.
These are the cities that presented the highest unemployment rates in the quarter
May-July 2021, among the 23 main cities of the country: Cúcuta 20.4% (where
70% of the employed population has informal jobs), Florencia 20.3%, Cali 20.2%.
Finally, the DANE report establishes that 58.9% of the employed population worked
in July more than 40 hours per week (compared to 44.8% in July of the previous
year), 28% worked 21 to 40 hours (compared to 32.3% in the same period of 2020) and
13.1% worked up to 20 hours (compared to 22.8% in that same period).
National Administrative Department of Statistics, Report, 09/03/2021.
