by Rod Hughes

No wonder Costa Rica’s unemployment has dropped to the lowest level in Latin America. Costa Rica’s largest newspaper, La Nacion, reported today that competition is fierce among companies to hire such tourism necessities as hotel managers and chefs, or vital construction personnel such as electricians, plumbers and engineers. And bilingual personnel for the some 20 call centers in the country, which employ around 20,000, are being pirated with higher salaries from other companies.

According to the International Labor Organization, a UN agency, Costa Rica’s jobless rate sank from a respectable 6% for the past decade to 4.8% last year, reported the English-language weekly, The Tico Times. “Costa Rica’s economic performance stands out among Central American countries and the rest of Latin America,” said the ILO’s labor expert Leonardo Ferreira. And that is not all, he told the newspaper, the country’s economic growth of 6.3% bettered Latin America’s average of 5.5%

Granted, all Caribbean and Latin American countries’ unemployment sank, but none could come close to this country’s figures except Honduras. Uruguay’s is at 10%, having improved nearly two points, Colombia’s is at 12%, Brazil’s is 9.7%, Venezuela’s is 9%. Even the U.S. figure of 5% (as of December) was not as good, reported Alex Leff, The Tico Times on line edition editor.

Moreover, probably because of the competition among companies for skilled Costa Rican technical workers, income among the employed rose 9.3% last year and the majority–73%–were quality and salaried jobs as opposed to free-lance or jobs of doubtful stability. Meanwhile, a construction company that wants to hire a carpenter, an electrician, or even an accountant, has to dangle a more attractive salary in front of an employed worker to lure him away from his present employer.