SANTO DOMINGO. The Economically Active Population (PEA) in the country, which is to say those persons old enough to work, is around 4.2 million Dominicans, but as of 30 September of this year, there are only 1.1 million workers registered in the Social Security Treasury (TSS).

Other data show that there are 420,000 persons working in the public sector, which means that in the country there are 1.5 million formal employees. And this indicates that there are 2.8 million persons of working age that are either unemployed or form part of the informal labor sector.

In the Dominican Republic there are 39,000 companies that have the 1.1 million employees, but the statistics from the TSS do not reflect the large number of workers that the municipal governments have, since it is now, after the amnesty, that it is expected that these employees become part of the Dominican Social Security System.

However, the president of the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) Lisandro Macarrulla, said that he was more worried by the under-employment.

Statistics on the functioning of the labor market that the Central Bank is preparing show that the local economyhas created 545,000 additional jobs.

Nonetheless, the lack of satisfaction, says Macarrulla, happens when it is discovered that only 160,000 have been absorbed in the formal sector, which is to say only 29%. And of these, an important part have been on the public payrolls, which tends to be not socially unjust, but inefficient, which means that 71% of the new jobs are in the informal sector.

De Diario Libre