Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0383/03830.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 17KB | 297 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03830}
$Pretitle{297}
$Title{Uruguay
Chapter 4B.   Population Problems}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{The Director Foreign Area Studies}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
labor
sector
employment
unemployment
population
workers
relatively
available
census}
$Date{1971}
$Log{Table 2.*0383001.tab
Table 3.*0383002.tab
Table 4.*0383003.tab
}
Country:     Uruguay
Book:        Area Handbook for Uruguay
Author:      The Director Foreign Area Studies
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 4B.   Population Problems

     In 1968 an independent Montevideo newspaper set forth briefly a listing
of the country's major demographic problems. Among these it mentioned a
sparse population with a low and declining birth rate, sagging immigration,
and a wave of emigration of young people since World War II. It also
observed that in this highly urbanized country there were too few people to
provide a market large enough to support a healthy and diversified industrial
establishment. The highest longevity rate in Latin America, coupled with the
early retirement made possible by the generous public welfare system and the
increasing proportion of young people remaining longer in the educational
system, leave relatively few adults in the productive age brackets to support
the remainder of the population.

Structure and Dynamics of the Labor Force

Age and Sex Composition

     A sampling from the 1963 population census resulted in the conclusion
that the economically active population included about 39.2 percent of the
total. Some 58.9 percent of the males and 19.6 percent of the females were
either employed or seeking employment (see table 2). Because there has never
been a comprehensive labor force census and the 1963 population census was the
first since 1908, data showing age and sex dynamics of the labor force are not
available.

     The percentage of Uruguay's population included in its labor force in
1963 was fifth highest among the twenty-two independent nations of the
Western Hemisphere. Some qualifying statements, however, are in order. During
the late 1960s the labor force included a minimum of 12 percent unemployed
and a considerable number of underemployed. It also included many government
employees with work weeks of thirty hours or less and seasonal and migratory
workers employed during half a year or less. Overall, the reported employment
rate represented an increase from an estimated 34 percent in 1940.

     The country's low birth rate, high rate of retention of young people in
schools, and provision for early retirement combined to maximize the
proportion of the labor force in the middle years of life. In 1963 nearly
half (448,220 out of a total of 1,015,500) were between the ages of thirty
and forty-nine. Employment of juveniles and adolescents was at about the
average for Latin America. It should be noted, however, that some secondary
school and most university students held part-time jobs while continuing their
educations. Early retirement is reflected in the 1963 figures by the drop from
the 54.6 percent of those fifty to fifty-four years old who were in the labor
force to the 30.3 percent of those sixty to sixty-four, in a country with an
average longevity of about seventy-one years.

[See Table 2.: Composition of Economically Active Uruguayan Population, by Sex
and Age Group, 1963 (in percent)]

     The highest rate of employment of women in 1963 was for those between
the ages of twenty and twenty-four, but it remained high for those between
twenty-five and twenty-nine years. Since women most commonly abandon their
jobs because of marriage and the bearing of children, these figures suggest
that Uruguayan women do not marry young, a conclusion consistent with the fact
that most of them are well-educated urban dwellers. In most societies, it is
young women in this category who are most likely to continue working and to
defer marriage until they reach full maturity.

     Because the comparative data from the 1961 and 1966 agricultural
censuses are relatively recent, they are useful, although they represent
samplings of an economic sector constituting less than 18 percent of the total
labor force. Between the two recent agricultural census counts, employment on
farms and ranches of more than about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) declined about 9.1
percent. The 146,147 males employed in 1966 were 91.4 percent of the number
who had been working in 1961. The 45,417 females were 89.3 percent. Both men
and women were migrating from country to town, but it was the women who were
moving faster.

Composition by Economic Sector and Occupational Category

     The most recently available firm data on composition of the labor force
by economic sector, based on a 5-percent sample of the 1963 population census,
as analyzed by the International Labor Office, give a total of 957,100 (see
table 3). Data by sex for economic sectors were not available. By type of
employment, however, females made up 22.3 percent of the employers and
self-employed, 25.7 percent of the salaried employees and wage earners, and
13.9 percent of the family workers. This count shows 235,800 females, or
nearly 25 percent of the total, as members of the 1963 labor force.

     These figures, the most complete ones available with respect to
employment by economic sector, are deficient in the sense that they do not
include those individuals seeking employment for the first time and members of
the armed forces. Such persons are included in other International Labor
Office data based also on the 1963 census, which report a 1963 working force
of 1,015,500 (see table 4).

     A characteristic of the economically active population in 1963 was the
small size, relatively the smallest in South America, of the
unpaid-family-worker category, a reflection of the high degree of
urbanization of the country. Since rural boys are permitted to work in the
fields at the age of twelve and Latin American child labor is primarily a
rural and male phenomenon, most of this relatively small group were probably
teenage boys.

     Because there was no census between 1908 and 1963, there is a shortage of
material on the extent of the growth of the labor force. One series of
statistical estimates, expressed in percentages for the years 1995, 1961, and
1965, reported those engaged in agricultural, pastoral, and related pursuits
in the three years to have been 26.5, 22.4, and 18.8 percent of the total
respectively, with the pastoral representing an average of three-fifths of
employment in the sector. Industry employed 20.4, 22.7, and 23.1 percent,
respectively. Construction accounted for 5.0, 4.2, and 3.7 percent. Trade,
service, and the unemployed included the remaining 48.0, 50.9, and 54.3
percent of the labor force. These data are estimates only and inconsistent in
minor detail with some other figures quoted.

[See Table 3.: Employment in Uruguay, by Economic Sector and Type, 1963]

Occupational Skills

     The quality of occupational skills appears to bear a direct relation to
the degree of education achieved by the personnel in the economic sector
involved. Output in terms of the per capita portion of the gross domestic
output at current factor costs by economic sector was lowest in agriculture
and highest in services. There were a great many of the poorest people engaged
in the services sector, but it was also in the services sector that most of
the highest incomes were found.

     In 1969 it was estimated that rural productivity averaged about 20
percent below that of the economy as a whole, although productivity on large
pastoral operations was reported high in relation to that on farms and ranches
below about 125 acres (50 hectares) in size. Skills are relatively the lowest
in the sheep country north of the Rio Negro where the population is sparse
and there is relatively the highest concentration of Negro and Indian
mixtures. This is the least developed part of the country and, because the
population is