Unemployment in Costa Rica fell to 19.1% in the moving quarter from November to January.
This maintained a downward trend that has followed the record unemployment figures Costa Rica recorded in mid-2020, when its coronavirus restrictions were at their most strict.
The decrease was almost one percentage compared to the October-December quarter, when unemployment reached 20%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Inec).
At the same time, the 19.1% unemployment rate represents an increase of 6.8 percentage points over the same period in 2020, before Costa Rica suffered the economic blow of the Covid-19, according to the Inec .
The agency detailed that women are the most affected by unemployment — at a rate of 24.6%, compared to 15.2% for men.
Unemployment in Costa Rica had reached 12% in March 2020, one of the highest levels recorded in the country until then, but it soared to 24% due to the impact of the pandemic in the moving quarter from May to July.
Since then it has had a slow but steady decline, as the economy has reopened.
Meanwhile, 19% of the working-age population is underemployed — that is, people who work fewer than 40 hours a week and would like to work more.
