Colombia’s February unemployment rate was up 0.2% compared to the same month last year, government statistics agency DANE announced Thursday.
This means a total of 2.8 million Colombians were unemployed last month.
The national unemployment rate in February 2010 was 12.6% compared to 12.8% in the same month this year, while in urban areas unemployment fell from 13.4% to 13.2% in the same period.
The City of Quibdo is still the one with the highest levels of unemployment. In the first two months of 2011, 23.1% of its population remained jobless.
Unemployment remains a significant challenge for President Juan Manuel Santos’s government which has promised to create two million jobs and set the target to reduce unemployment to below 10%.