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Nicaragua Unemployment and Underemployment
Reliable labor statistics are difficult to obtain, but
nearly
half of Nicaragua's work force was estimated to be
unemployed or
underemployed in 1990. Many Nicaraguan workers eke out
speculative incomes in the burgeoning informal sector,
which
encompasses about 55 percent of the economically active
population. After several years of hyperinflation in the
late
1980s had eroded conventional salaries, thousands of
Nicaraguans
chose to cast their lot as black marketeers, street
vendors,
taxicab drivers, and other persons earning their livings
on the
streets. Almost everyone sought some means to augment or
replace
inflation-ruined salaries.
Data as of December 1993
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