By Wendy Anders

Business leaders expressed their concerns over stagnant unemployment after 2nd quarter data was made public by the National Census and Statistics Institute (INEC, in Spanish).

The INEC announced last week that 9.4 percent of the work force, or over 200,000 people, are unemployed, a figure that hasn’t changed for at least a year.

The Costa Rican Union of Private Business Chambers and Associations (UCCAEP, in Spanish) stated the country needed to urgently create conditions to increase the generation of employment opportunities.

Also of concern to business leaders is the fact that the net labor force participation rate dropped by 4.9 percentage points compared to the first half of 2015.

This reduction can be attributed largely to people feeling unmotivated to keep searching for employment after having been rejected, or else have been unable to find job offerings, said the UCCAEP in a press statement.

“UCCAEP holds that the country needs to reform the institutional nature of the labor market, make the supply and demand of work compatible with each other, and implement productive policies that stimulate the creation of more well-paying job opportunities,” said Franco Arturo Pacheco, UCCAEP president.

To improve the employment situation, Pacheco said two pending pieces of legislation, the dual formation law which would allow students to study and gain work experience simultaneously, and the law to update the work-day, can both help.

In addition, Pacheco emphasized the need for students to finish their degrees, and said more students need to become proficient in a second language, especially English, so that more foreign companies invest in Costa Rica.

The fact that the country has 818,000 workers in the informal sector is also worrisome; and the recent 2.6 point drop in informal employment recorded by the INEC was not due to workers moving into formal employment, rather it reflects women dropping out of the workforce, stated the UCCAEP.