Ecuador registers 1 million unemployed without the data of the poor class

In an optimistic scenario, unemployment would reach 20% of the economically active population, he added.

Byron Villacís, economist and former director of the INEC, pointed out that the results of the statistics revealed a few days ago on employment and unemployment in Ecuador are not real, since the popular class was not taken into account, but only the middle and lower strata. high.

A survey by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses revealed that as of June 2020 13.3% of the economically active population is unemployed. In other words, more than a million people lost their jobs.

“The situation is dramatic and critical, however the information must be read well, the organizational, economic and political context must be analyzed because the polls arrive not only in the pandemic but within the framework of a public policy that affects the working class ”.

He insisted that the survey is biased because if before 100 people were interviewed, for example, now it was done to 60, previously 100 questions were used and now 35, however the most serious thing is that it was done by telephone.

“It biases against the popular strata, they only go to medium and high levels when those who suffered the most were the popular strata.”

Villacís acknowledged that the results reveal the serious situation in Ecuador. He reiterated that the survey only focuses on the middle and upper class, and not on those who every day go out to sell something, risking their lives in the middle of the pandemic.

“They do not have the alternative of waiting at home and working online, they have to expose themselves, they should receive financial support that even without a pandemic is discussed as necessary.”

According to Villacís, to this is added the reduction of salaries of those who were not fired. There is a working class unprotected by the state and even uninformed to protect itself. Some may use their savings or credit card to buy health protection or pay for a private clinic, but poor people do not: “That represents about 60%.”

Villacís emphasized that in an optimistic scenario the real unemployment figures could be at 20% and in the most pessimistic it reaches 25%: “The situation of Ecuadorians is dramatic because it does not even have a mechanism to be visible.”