This summer the Program of Youth Employment is available in Uruguay until March 31^st. The program’s goals is to “facilitate the access to the first labour experience, promoting work culture for development and ensuring to increase the labour formality levels during the touristic season”.

The program was created on December 2016, based on a proposal made by the National Institute of Employment and Professional Training (INEFOP) that also considered the “concerns” of the touristic business sector and Rocha’s commercial centre, in order to promote “youth formal labour participation” during the touristic season by granting a number of incentives to enable de access to the first working experience.

The Decree points out that, besides increasing labour formality levels during the touristic season, the initiative “could properly combine working and studying, as it is developed during school holidays”.

Young people from 15 to 24 years old who lack formal working experience for a period longer than 90 consecutive days can access the program –under age people must be properly authorized-.

In addition, employers who hire young people enrolled in the program have 25% subsidies for wages paid (with a UYU 16,643 cap), financed by the Fund of Labour Reconversion, and managed by INEFOP. The Youth Employment Law (19,133), enacted on December 2013, sets a minimum hiring period of six months, but a decree enacted a year ago reduced the period of time to three months for the summer season.

Eduardo Pereyra, National Director of Employment of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, and General Director of INEFOP, pointed out that they are communicating the program in the “main touristic areas of the country”

Pereyra added that this program is part of other actions that have been developed by INEFOP during 2017, such as training in jobs linked to the touristic sector; for instance, language training –in English and Portuguese-, the “support and strengthening of touristic entrepreneurship”, technical assistance to companies, and certification in occupations for “better professionalization” in different activities of the sector, such as hotel, customer care, serving services, protocol and touristic entrepreneurship management , and digital marketing. “The Ministry of Tourism is working hard, together with business chambers and workers, defining an intervention strategy, and we support that work”, said the director of INEFOP.

Since 2015, 5,000 trainings and specific technical workshops for the touristic sector. In addition, in 2017, over 3,400 people accessed the program, and invested over UYU 44 million, twice the investment made in 2016. “Furthermore, in 2017 162 courses were delivered in 34 locations in 13 departments, with over 3,400 workers and businessmen. Most jobs are created in activities such as restaurants, bars, and canteens, which stand for 39.4% of the total number of jobs, followed by passengers’ transportation (23.8%), and accommodation (20.3%)”, states the website of the Executive Power.

It is interesting to point out that every INEFOP action could be enhanced by leveraging ILO Convention 181, ratified by Uruguay, which promotes the collaboration between the public employment sector and private employment agencies. Clearly, active employment policies managed under a private-public articulation could generate a major impact in training of skills based on the demand, as well as in a more agile access to the formal labour market.