Recent graduates asked to have years of experience and women rejected because of their age are the groups hardest hit by unemployment in Chile, according to Cooperativa. The outlet reports that unemployment reached 9.6% in the June-August quarter, the highest rate in five years and the highest in South America.
Nicolás Calderón is 28 and a civil engineer. He graduated in 2024 and, after completing his internship, could not find work in his field. "I had to take a job selling shoes; I spent 10 months there," he told the EFE news agency, as quoted by Cooperativa.
He later found work in his field, but spent the last year and a half moving between companies where he stayed only briefly. Staff cuts left him unemployed two months ago. "In my profession, they are asking for between five and ten years of experience," he said.
Figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE) show the scale of the problem. Youth unemployment, among those aged 15 to 24, reached 24.6%, while 21.6% of people aged 25 to 34 are neither studying nor working.
A report by Diego Portales University's Economic Context Observatory (OCEC-UDP) put unemployment among people who had completed higher education at 8.3%. Among graduates under 30, that rate rises to 15.9%.
Among women, unemployment reached 10.3% in the latest quarter. Among female professionals, it stands at 8.7%, compared with 7.8% among men with higher education. According to the UDP study, overall unemployment among those aged 45 to 54 rose to 7.6%.
Marcela Radena, 51, worked for more than two decades as an executive secretary with computer skills. She now cleans homes while trying to return to her profession. "They tell you yes, but that they are only looking for people up to 35 or 40 years old," she told EFE.
Previously, she spent four months cleaning at companies because "it was the only option." There, she met many other women in the same situation. "You start to feel old, as though you're out of the job market," she said.
Municipalities are trying to shorten job searches. The Municipality of Providencia organized the "Activate Your Young Talent" job fair, with 20 companies and more than 1,200 vacancies for technicians and professionals. Mauricio Brito, the municipality's director of Local Development, explained that many vacancies do not reach jobseekers because of a lack of information.
President José Antonio Kast presented a package of measures to create more than 100 thousand jobs with 1.3 trillion pesos. Current unemployment represents almost a million people looking for work without finding it.
An analysis by the law firm La Firma, however, estimates that funding for employment policies would fall 34.7% under the 2027 Budget Bill, with cuts to hiring subsidies, training and job placement services.
La Firma economist Fidel Bennet told La Tercera that the Unified Employment Subsidy (SUE), in effect since this month, receives 76,000 million pesos. The figure is less than half the combined funding of the three subsidies it replaces and of the roughly 200 billion pesos annually envisaged in its financial report.
