After five years showing difficulties in enrolling workers, the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) exceeded 800 thousand contributors for the first time in February of this year, according to figures published by the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).
And although in the first two months the entity – which has been in a financial crisis for more than a decade – managed to surpass this threshold, the truth is that it still requires more than 100 thousand new members to reach the 914,196 it had in 2017, prior to the outbreak of the sociopolitical crisis of 2018, which caused the loss of more than 200 thousand taxpayers.
Until April of this year, according to the official report, the entity already had 804,668 members, that is, an increase of 13,083 in the last year. This would imply that the INSS in 12 months has only been able to add a little more than 1,000 people on average each month, which makes its recovery reflected prior to 2017 difficult.
Only in the first two months of the year, in relation to last December, the Government assures that the entity has obtained 12,755 new members. That is, of the more than 13 thousand in the last year, more than 80 percent joined so far this year and in 2023 the incorporation of new taxpayers was almost zero.
Strong lag
In this way, the INSS accumulates an enormous gap in its membership base. Only in 2018, before the impact of the crisis, specialists warned that the entity urgently needed to exceed one million taxpayers to be able to face its financial deficit, which was serious. But far from improving its position, the INSS observed a deterioration in its numbers in the following five years.
Of the 12,755 jobs that have been created so far in 2024, the majority are concentrated in the agricultural, forestry, hunting and fishing sectors, where there are 70,952 affiliates. Compared to December, this group of activities added 5,066 contributors, that is, a little more than 38 percent of the total new affiliates.
The problem with this economic segment is that affiliates are usually temporary, that is, they are not sustainable in the long term, because many are registered in the INSS in the context of the beginning of the season of cutting and harvesting crops in the field. This poses a challenge for Social Security.
The manufacturing industry accumulates 175,706 taxpayers, of which 6,405 were added in the first two months of this year. That is to say, the agricultural sector for this activity is the one that is creating the most formal jobs, the latter despite the fact that more than 20 thousand jobs have been lost in the free zone in the last year.
Commerce with low membership
One of the key sectors in the economy, which, however, is not creating enough jobs, is commerce, which has 132,892 members. Since December it has added 1,356 taxpayers and if compared to the same period last year there are 9,769 additional taxpayers.
Communal, social and personal services, which concentrate the largest number of INSS affiliates, are the ones that are not creating jobs. As of February, there were 268,028 members, less than the 268,782 reported in December of last year, which implies a reduction of 754 places.
Meanwhile, transportation, storage and communications has 38,171 insured, that is, 379 less compared to last December when there were 38,550 affiliates.
Construction, which according to the Government is in recovery, has accumulated 25,072 insured so far this year, 1,038 more compared to last December. If the figure is compared to a year ago, companies in this sector have increased their participation with 2,475 formal workers.
In the case of mines and quarries, only 32 new members have been added in the first two months of the year, despite the fact that the sector has benefited from high international gold prices. Until February they had 5,831 insured.
The financial sector, which is one of the activities that had difficulty recovering from the impact of three years of economic recession and that has suffered the loss of branches, until February had 79,582 workers reported in the INSS, a little more than the 78,992 counted in last December.
And finally, the electricity, gas and water sector until February had 8,434 affiliates, less than the 9,033 reported last December and slightly higher than the 8,096 recorded in the same month last year, according to figures published by the BCN.
The other side of the coin
The increase in the number of affiliates contrasts, however, with the unemployment rate that the Government has been reporting in the last two months.
Nicaragua closed the first two months with an increase in unemployment and underemployment, bad news for a labor market that is still sending signals that the economic growth promoted by the Government continues without denting its indicators.
The unemployment rate in February was 3.7 percent, higher than the 3.2 percent reported in the same period last year, according to data from the National Institute of Development Information (Inide). If the rate is compared to January, it remains unchanged.
On the side of underemployment, which is usually low-paid and precarious employment, in February it affected 38.5 percent of the labor market, that is, more than the 36.7 percent reported in the same month last year. 43.4 percent of workers in the urban area had this type of employment, while in Managua the rate rose to 49.1 percent, and in the rural area it was 31.4 percent.
2024-04-02 06:43:04
#Social #Security #exceeds #affiliates #time #outbreak #sociopolitical #crisis
