Employment Rate
The Employment Rate measures the share of the working-age population that is employed during a given period across Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a core labor-market indicator within the Latin Macro Watch (LMW) dataset published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on data.iadb.org, helping researchers, policymakers, and journalists compare employment conditions consistently across the region.
Coverage
Data are available for 14 countries at annual, monthly, and quarterly frequency, covering the period 1990–2026. Values are reported as percentages, including average-of-period, end-of-period, and seasonally adjusted variants, and can be viewed with moving-average transformations (MA3, MA6, MA12).
Sources
Figures are compiled from official national statistical agencies, including INDEC - Argentina, INEGI - Mexico, the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE) de Chile, and the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE) - Colombia. For Argentina, the series is computed from INDEC's urban EPH, combining historical discrete survey waves up to 2002 with continuous quarterly EPH data from 2003 onward, and excludes 2015Q4 and 2016Q1 because INDEC did not publish data for those periods.
Metadata & use
| Format | CSV |
|---|---|
| Language | en |
| Country |
Argentina
Bahamas
Trinidad & Tobago
Belize
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
El Salvador
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Panama
Uruguay
Venezuela
Barbados
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
|
| Data notes |
What does this indicator measure?The employment rate is the share of the working-age population that is employed during a given period. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered?The indicator covers 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean at annual, monthly, and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990 to 2026. What units and transformations are available?Values are expressed as percentages, including average-of-period, end-of-period, and seasonally adjusted variants. Moving averages (MA3, MA6, MA12) are also available. Where does the data come from?Data are compiled from official national statistical agencies such as INDEC - Argentina, INEGI - Mexico, the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE) de Chile, and DANE - Colombia. What are typical uses of this indicator?It is used to assess labor-market health, benchmark employment performance across countries, and inform employment and social policy. How do I cite this indicator?Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Employment Rate". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset. |