Abstract
Abstract This paper characterizes the labor market of youth in Colombia from 2008 to 2017. We estimate labor market indicators for individuals aged between 14 and 28 years using microdata from Colombia's household surveys over the study period. Our estimates document the main patterns and trends in the labor market of youth in labor force participation, employment, unemployment, informality, and earnings. We compare these statistics with the same indicators of adults (individuals aged between 29 and 65 years), and explore differences in characteristics within youth such as gender, region, educational attainment, socioeconomic status (SES), and experience. Results indicate that participation rate of young Colombians have increased in recent years, but are mainly employed in low-quality jobs namely unsalaried and informal. We also document marked inequalities in labor market outcomes across youth characteristics. We provide a series of recommendations to guide future youth labor policy based on these estimates as well as the critical analysis of recent youth policies in Colombia.
Highlights
The labor market is closely linked with economic inequality and the possibility of an economically sustainable society (Hacibedel and Pouokam, 2019)
Youth are improving their conditions but differences across years are rarely statistically different. These findings suggest that the transition into the labor market remains challenging for Colombian youth, young people are participating more in the labor market
We calculate labor market indicators for people aged between 14-28 from 2008-2017 using microdata from the Gran Encuesta integrada de Hogares (GEIH), the main official Colombian household survey
Summary
The labor market is closely linked with economic inequality and the possibility of an economically sustainable society (Hacibedel and Pouokam, 2019). This greater labor market attachment, is explained by an increase in low-quality jobs: unsalaried and informal These jobs tend to have lower average wages and may have lasting consequences if youth are not able to transition towards more productive employment, with better earning conditions and social security coverage (Cruces et al, 2012). These results suggest that the current problem regarding young people is not whether they participate or not in the labor market but the quality of the jobs that they are accepting.
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