President Carlos Alvarado says that the main challenge of his government is to reduce unemployment and defends the actions promoted by his administration in this field.
According to Alvarado, his government has taken steps in terms of infrastructure and fiscal stability in this year and a half of management and admits that unemployment is an area that should be given more attention.
He justified that one of the aspects that accelerates the unemployment rate is the fact that in the last 20 years there was no investment in academic training that responds 100% to the demands of foreign investment, nor in infrastructure and educational equipment.
The most recent continuous employment survey released on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) said that unemployment figures reached a total of 278,108 unemployed citizens in the third quarter of this year.
The total number of unemployed is still much higher than in 2017, when unemployment hit 204 thousand people. In percentages, this number of unemployed represents 11.4% of the population.
The percentage figure is slightly less than the 11.9% reached three months ago, but remains within the same parameters set throughout the year. Regarding a year ago, it represents an increase of 1.2 percentage points.
Of the total unemployed, 125 thousand are men and 153 thousand are women.