Chile's jobless rate in February-April fell to a nine-year low for the period to 6.8 percent, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Tuesday, as the economy continued to pick up steam. While the rate was just above the figure of 6.7 percent in January-to-March quarter this year, it was well below the February-April period one year ago of 8.6 percent.
"The surprise today was the unemployment rate," said Eduardo Orpis, an economist with Finanzas today. "The interannual decline was large but the most important factor is that it's continuing to fall." The jobless result was below the 6.9 percent median forecast of nine economists polled by Reuters.
Chile's unemployment rate has been at nine-year lows since November. The INE said job growth was 3.3 percent in the last 12 months, while the work force grew 1.3 percent. Sectors that provided the most job growth were industry, construction and retail. Salaried employment continued to show important increases, up 4.7 percent over last year, while the categories of self-employed and unpaid family employees continued to decline.
"It's a good figure and is without a doubt related to increasing levels of economic activity." After a lull in economic growth in 2006, when economic growth slowed to 4 percent, in the first quarter this year the pace picked up to a 5.8 percent expansion. The INE also reported on Tuesday that Chilean industrial production rose 5.2 percent in April compared with the same month last year, the same rate of growth as in March.