SANTO DOMINGO – According to data from the National Continuous Labor Force Survey (ENCFT) conducted by the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD), the recent performance of the labor market continues to reflect positive trends in employment, unemployment, and informality indicators. In this context, both the level and rate of employment are at record highs, while unemployment and the informality rate are near their lowest levels since the beginning of the ENCFT statistical series.
In the second quarter of 2025, the total number of employed people in the Dominican economy (including formal and informal workers) stood at 5,123,548 workers, for an increase of 121,164 new net employed people when compared to April-June 2024.
Analyzing employment trends by demographic variables, the participation of young people aged 15 to 39 stands out, accounting for 82.5% of new jobs. Furthermore, it was found that 86,532 of these additional jobs were filled by individuals with university degrees, representing 71.4% of the total. In terms of gender, men contributed 78,440 workers, while women accounted for 42,724.
The employment rate (OR), that is, the ratio between the total employed and the working-age population (WAP), remained at 62.8% for April-June 2025, the highest figure in the series of this indicator, 1.0 percentage points (pp) higher than the rate of the second quarter of 2024.
Analyzing the year-on-year increase of 121,164 workers in April-June 2025, it is observed that formal employment increased by 164,598 people, while informal employment decreased by 43,434 people. Thus, the informality rate stood at 54.0% of the employed population in the second quarter of 2025, a reduction of 2.2 percentage points compared to the 56.1% recorded in the same period of 2024.
Regarding the evolution of unemployment, it decreased from 5.3% in April-June 2024 to 5.0% in the same quarter of 2025. It is worth noting that the open unemployment rate (underutilization indicator SU1), that is, the percentage of unemployed people who are actively seeking work as a proportion of the labor force, after having reached 8.0% in the first quarter of 2021 as a consequence of the effects of the pandemic, has been decreasing until remaining in recent quarters around its minimum values within the historical series.
In other news, the degree of integration of people over 15 years of age into the labor market, measured by the overall participation rate (OPR), defined as the ratio between the labor force (LF) and the working-age population (WAP), reached its maximum value by registering 66.1% in the second quarter of 2025, 0.8 pp above that obtained in the same period of 2024.
