More Work to Do? Taking Stock of Latin American Labor Markets

Antonio David, Frederic Lambert and Frederik Toscani

No 2019/055, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: We analyze the performance of labor markets in Latin America since the late 1990s. Strong GDP growth during the commodity boom period led to important gains in employment and a fall in the unemployment rate as labor demand outpaced an increasing labor supply. We emphasize the role of informality in the dynamics of labor markets in Latin America. A re-examination of Okun’s law shows that informality dampens changes in unemployment accompanying output fluctuations. Moreover, we present some evidence that countries with higher redundancy costs and cumbersome dismissal regulations, exhibit “excess” informality over and above what would be expected based on their income and educational levels. Labor market reforms could thus contribute to reducing informality and increasing the responsiveness of labor markets to output growth. However, looking at selected case studies of reforms using the synthetic control method, we find mixed results in terms of labor market outcomes.

Keywords: WP; unemployment rate; minimum wage; collective bargaining; employment growth; financial crisis; participation rate; Labor Markets; Latin America; Okun’s Law; Informality; institutions data; wage council; low income; unemployment margin; labor market slack; growth rate; wage pressure; terms of trade; indicators in Latin America; employment protection regime; labor markets in Latin America; Unemployment; Labor market institutions; Employment; South America; Central America; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2019-03-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=46661 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/055

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().