The number of Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia already exceeds 1.6 million people, which corresponds to 3.4% of the 48.2 million inhabitants of the Andean country, according to data released Tuesday by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE).
This can be seen in data from the DANE report “Venezuelan Migrant Labor Market”, in which the state entity investigated the impact that migration has had on the country’s employment figures.
“We have a total of 1,641,000 migrants that in interpretation of the Great Integrated Household Survey (GEIH) corresponds to 3.4% of the total population of the country,” said the director of DANE, Juan Daniel Oviedo, in a press conference.
The official said that between August 2018 and July, 773,000 migrants arrived in the country, equivalent to 1.6% of Colombia’s population. Thousands of Venezuelans cross into Colombia to escape the crisis that is hitting their country. However, he warned that “the possibility that Venezuelan migration is structurally affecting the level of the unemployment rate is quite remote at this time.
According to DANE figures, of the 773,000 people who arrived in Colombia in the last 12 months, 19.2% are unemployed, while in the same period the unemployment rate among Colombians was 10.1% and the total reached 10.2%.
The report also refers to the unemployment figures in Bogotá, Barranquilla, and Cúcuta, the three Colombian cities in which most Venezuelan citizens live and where the unemployment rates of this group of emigrants are 21.7%, 15.9%, and 24.9%, respectively.
On the other hand, Oviedo valued the interest of the citizens of the neighboring nation to “be part of the occupied population in the country” and stressed that it is “perpetually higher than that of Colombians”.
“They, because of their demographic profile and their age profile, being more qualified and concentrated between the ages of 25 and 40, need to work and this is reflected in the overall participation rate, which is 10 points higher than that of Colombians,” he said. The overall participation rate was 63.7% between August 2018 and July, while that of migrants reached 74.3%.
The report highlights that of the more than 1.6 million Venezuelans who have arrived in the country, 28% have basic primary education; 7% have basic higher education; 31% average; 5% have technical, professional and technological skills; and 7% have higher and postgraduate degrees.
Venezuelan citizens also account for 1.5% of Colombia’s employed population, 90% of whom have informal jobs “but not necessarily precarious”. However, the figure is alarming if one considers that 1.1% of the country’s total employed population corresponds to Venezuelans who work in the informal sector.
Oviedo explained that what prevails in terms of informality are not itinerant sales but “other phenomena such as informal jobs in fixed or office premises, in beauty salons, in restaurants, in hotels, in commercial establishments in general terms”.
On the other hand, the report shows that of the 1.6 million Venezuelans who are in Colombia, 511,000 are affiliated with, contribute to or benefit from some social security entity in health, while the remaining 1.1 million are not and are therefore in the informal sector.
That is why Oviedo called for equality between Colombians and migrants because, he warned, the wage gap is “almost 40% less for the Venezuelan population. “If 85% of the Venezuelan migrant population is not insured, they are willing (…) to accept an informal offer that does not insure them in terms of health,” he concluded.
SOURCE: News Herder
