There are data that the government prefers to read quickly, in a low voice, and on a Friday afternoon. The latest employment report is one of them
In August, unemployment rose to 7.2%. Two tenths, the optimists will say. A small thing. But the number that matters is not that one. What matters is that today there are 2,500 fewer people working than a year ago. In a country that prides itself on its "stability," the economy is not only not adding jobs: it is losing them
And here comes the part that no one in the Executive Branch will explain at a press conference. If unemployment did not rise further, it was not due to any public policy merit. It was because participation dropped. Translated from technical language to plain Spanish: there are Uruguayans who got tired of knocking on doors and went home. For statistics, those who stop looking are no longer considered unemployed. For reality, they are still without work. The thermometer does not show fever because the patient left the room
A plateau shaped like a ceiling
The seasonally adjusted series of employed tells the complete story. Between 2021 and 2025, employment rose almost uninterruptedly: the economy was coming out of the pandemic, productive forces were being unleashed, and the country added more than 150,000 jobs. For about a year now, the curve has flattened. It no longer rises. Now it begins to tilt downward
This is not a coincidence or bad luck. It is the predictable result of a model that confuses distributing with producing
Work has a price, even if the State doesn't like it
There is an elementary economic truth that is considered almost heresy in Uruguay: work is a good that is exchanged, and like any good, it has a price. When that price is not set by the agreement between the employer and the worker, but by a tripartite table where the government, the union, and a businessman representing the big players sit, the result is always the same. Those who do not produce enough to pay what the State has decreed their hour is worth are not hired. Period
Who are they? The usual ones. Young people, who have no experience to offer. Among those aged 14 to 24, unemployment exceeds 23%. Almost one in four. Women, at 8.8%. The less qualified from the interior. That is, exactly the people that the left claims to defend, and who are the first to be left out every time wages are "protected" by decree
Intervention does not eliminate the law of supply and demand. It only decides who pays the cost. And it is always the weakest who pays
One in five, outside the system
The most revealing data from the report went almost unnoticed: 20.8% of those who work are not registered in social security. One in five Uruguayan workers lives informally
The progressive reading is predictable: "we need to increase oversight." That is, more inspectors, more fines, more State chasing the corner store owner and the day laborer. But the correct question is another. Why does a Uruguayan prefer to work without contributions, without coverage, without future retirement? Because formality is a luxury. Because between employer contributions, personal contributions, taxes, fees, and the bureaucratic maze, hiring someone formally in Uruguay is an act of faith. Informality is not a moral vice of Uruguayans. It is the rational response of normal people to a State that charges like Sweden and delivers like any country in the neighborhood
The State is not all of us
We are repeatedly told from school that "the State is all of us." It is the most expensive phrase in the history of the country. The State does not generate a single peso that it has not taken from someone who works. Every unnecessary official, every deficit public company, every program that exists to justify its own budget, is financed with the sweat of the private sector. From the same private sector that now, exhausted, has stopped hiring
Uruguay has a political class that lives off managing what belongs to others and a state apparatus that functions like a partner that never puts in capital but always collects dividends. And when the partner eats up the profit, the businessman does not invest, commerce does not expand, and the young person from Rivera or Cerro Norte does not get their first job. Then we are surprised that they leave for Madrid
What’s next
The government has two paths. The first is the usual one: announce an employment plan, create a commission, add officials to "combat informality," and blame the international context. The second is the one that no government of the Broad Front has been willing to take: lower the cost of hiring, free up wage negotiations, reduce spending, and let Uruguayans work without asking for permission
The numbers from August are not a catastrophe. They are something worse: they are a warning. Employment has stopped growing and the only reason why unemployment is not exploding is that people are giving up
A country where working becomes harder than not working does not have a cyclical problem. It has a model problem
