Whereas some economies are now roaring back as restrictions are lifted, in Latin America things seem to be getting worse
BEFORE THE pandemic hit, Jaime Alirio Pinilla, a 45-year-old in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, was employed as a construction worker. “But because of this shit I lost my job and now work on the streets,” he says, standing behind a steel cart from which he sells freshly squeezed orange juice, sweets, cigarettes and coffee.
The spread of the disease spurred some governments across the region to implement the world’s toughest lockdowns. A quantitative measure produced by Goldman Sachs, a bank, assigns a score from zero to 100 to measure the severity of a country’s rules on lockdown, the degree of adherence to such strictures and any voluntary social distancing . No region has had a more home-bound year than Latin America, with movement 70% more constrained than in North America.
Recent research from the IMF finds that employment in what it calls “contact-intensive sectors”—the kind where it is impossible to do a job without being in physical proximity to others—is especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean. Jobs in industries such as restaurants, shops or public transport account for 43% of total employment, compared with 30% in emerging markets as a whole.
The design of the stimulus also has shortcomings. Countries with the most successful stimulus plans have sent vast amounts of money directly to people. That has helped break the link between job loss and household-spending cuts, supporting the economy. Latin America, in contrast, has focused its resources elsewhere, including on building up underfunded health-care systems.
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