The Executive seeks to mitigate the effects generated in Uruguay by the drought, the water crisis and the exchange rate difference with Argentina.
He Executive power presented at the Parliament a bill to empower the management headed by President Luis Lacalle Pou to grant special unemployment benefit regimes in special cases until the end of 2024, with an eye on combating a problem that has been growing in Uruguay.
The initiative requires parliamentary endorsement so that the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS), that had already announced that measures were being analyzed, may have this particular tool available to sectors or companies, at a time when the country is affected by drought, the water crisis and the exchange difference with Argentina.
In the note submitted to Parliament, the Executive requested that the MTSS be empowered to establish this measure “for reasons of general interest and until December 31, 2024 at the latest”. The regulation contemplates the possibility of implementing special unemployment subsidy regimes “due to dismissal, total suspension and reduction of tasks, wages or income”.
In this way, the national administration seeks to provide coverage to victims of “forced unemployment situations”. When arguing the request, he recalled that the country is going through “a water and fodder deficit”, which ended up decreeing a state of agricultural emergency, affecting different branches of the sector.
There are 161,500 unemployed in Uruguay, according to the INE
The latest survey on the labor market prepared by the National Statistics Institute (INE) reflected that the unemployment rate rose in April to 8.8%, with what there is 161,500 Uruguayans looking for work, but they can’t get it, which means a few 24,000 more than in the same month last year.
At the same time, there was a slight increase in employment, something that is explained because, although the number of jobs is growing, the number of people offering their work in the market is increasing even more, that is, the activity rate, which in April rose to 63%with 1.84 million of people in the market, which implies 52,000 people more than in April 2022.
Source: Ambito
