Chile - Labor Force Employment

For Chile, the National Institute of Statistice (INE) reports monthly employment data for the country and regions: total population, labor force, employed population, unemployed, unemployment rate, and inactive population.

Active:

• Benchmark: CPV 2017
• Framework: ILO
• Classification: CAENES, a variation on UN ISIC Rev. 4
• Measurements:
  • Thousands of persons (Ths. #)
  • Percent (%)
• Cumulation: Three-month moving average (3-mo MA)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Monthly
• Start dates:
  • 2013m3 for most
  • 2020m1 for "no response"
• Geo coverage:
  • Country (1)
  • Administrative region (all 16, ICHL_^^)
• All concept-geo pairs exist: Yes

Predecessors:

• ISIC Rev. 4, CPV 2002, 17 regions - 2013m3 to 2019m12 (_19)
• ISIC Rev. 3, 15 regions - 2009m3 to 2016m12 (_16)

The New National Employment Survey (NENE) aims to classify people 15 years and older according to their employment status. NENE replaced the former National Employment Survey (ENE) in April 2010. The survey follows a set of defined rules on the international level which allows the INE to measure employment and unemployment by way of household surveys. These rules help to define questions that make up the household survey.

The survey is in accordance with the resolutions of ILO's International Conferences of Labor Statisticians (ICLS). Employed persons contains data for a person who worked at least one hour in a week and received payment. The distinction between "traditional" and "non-traditional" employment is made by how the participant recognizes work activity. Unemployed accounts for people seeking work in the last four weeks and those available for work in the last two weeks.

Previously, the National Employment Survey (ENE) sampled households from a framework based upon the population census and housing. There were several methodological changes made to the survey due to demographic and structural labor market changes collected from the 2002 census. There are smoothing additives (who perform only a translation of the levels and maintain characteristics trend only), linear (who maintain the differences and maintain cyclical characteristics), and using mathematical functions such as exponential (which affect the cycles and trends hold).

CAENAS (Clasificador de Actividades Económicas Nacional para Encuestas Sociodemográphicas) is a variation on CIIU Rev.4.cl (revisión 4 adaptación chilena), the localization of UN ISIC Rev. 4. CAENES is identical to CIIU at the one-digit (section) level.

Moody's Analytics supplements

We back-extend the LFS quartet for the country and national capital, in both SA and NSA terms when reported. We produce SA counterparts as needed.

As of 2020, figures are benchmarked to the 2017 Population and Housing Census (Censo de Población y Vivienda, CPV).

Further reading

At the source:

• Activity Classification (pdf)
• Survey methodology (pdf, Spanish)

At IMF (SDDS):

• Labor market: Employment (Jan 2025)
• Labor market: Unemployment (Jan 2025)

• Sep 2008 - Initial version.
• Apr 2010 - Change in method.
• Jun 2017 - Terminated "combined region" geos.
• Aug 2019 - Addendum of "inactive population" concept.
• Aug 2019 - Change in geos.
• Feb 2020 - Addendum of unemployment rate for Gran Santiago.
• Feb 2020 - Change in source for national unemployment rate SA.
• 8 Jul 2025, Phillip Thorne - Change in source for remaining national LFS SA: Moody's Analytics supplements.