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Honduras Unemployment
Between 1980 and 1983, 20 percent of the work force was
unemployed--double the percentage of the late 1970s. Job
creation
remained substantially behind the growth of the labor
force
throughout the 1980s. Unemployment grew to 25 percent by
1985, and
combined unemployment and underemployment jumped to 40
percent in
1989. By 1993, 50 to 60 percent of the Honduran labor
force was
estimated to be either underemployed or unemployed.
The government's acceptance of foreign aid during the
1980s, in
lieu of economic growth sparked by private investment,
allowed it
to ignore the necessity of creating new jobs. Honduras's
GDP showed
reasonable growth throughout most of the 1980s, especially
when
compared to the rest of Latin America, but it was
artificially
buoyed by private consumption and public-sector spending.
Mainstay agricultural jobs became scarcer in the late
1970s.
Coffee harvests and plantings in border area decreased
because
fighting in neighboring Nicaragua and El Salvador spilled
over into
Honduran. Other factors contributing to the job scarcity
were
limited land, a reluctance on the part of coffee growers
to invest
while wars destabilized the region, and a lack of credit.
Small
farmers became increasingly unable to support themselves
as their
parcels of land diminished in size and productivity.
Problems in the agricultural sector have fueled
urbanization.
The Honduran population was 77 percent rural in 1960. By
1992 only
55 percent of the Honduran population continued to live in
rural
areas
(see
Rural to Urban Migration
, ch. 2). Campesinos
have
flocked to the cities in search of work but found little
there.
Overall unemployment has been exacerbated by an influx of
refugees
from the wars in neighboring countries, attracted to
Honduras,
ironically, by its relatively low population density and
relative
peace. In the agricultural sector (which in 1993 still
accounted
for approximately 60 percent of the labor force),
unemployment has
been estimated to be far worse than the figures for the
total labor
force.
Honduran urban employment in the early 1990s has been
characterized by underemployment and marginal
informal-sector jobs,
as thousands of former agricultural workers and refugees
have moved
to the cities seeking better lives. Few new jobs have been
generated in the formal sector, however, because domestic
private
sector and foreign investment has dropped and coveted
public-sector
jobs have been reserved mostly for the small Honduran
middle-class
with political or military connections. Only one of ten
Honduran
workers was securely employed in the formal sector in
1991.
In the mid-1980s, the World Bank reported that only
10,000 new
jobs were created annually; the low rate of job creation
resulted
in 20,000 people being added to the ranks of the
unemployed every
year. The actual disparity between jobs needed for full
employment
and new jobs created exceeded that projection, however.
For those
with jobs, the buying power of their wages tumbled
throughout the
1980s while the cost of basic goods, especially food,
climbed
precipitously.
Data as of December 1993
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