According to a recent study by the International Labor Organization, there’s a tenfold increase in remote work in Latin America.
Before the pandemic hit the world, a mere 3% of the population was working remotely. After WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the percentage of remote workers increased to 20-30%.
During the worst phase of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, around 23 million workers started working from home, according to the “Challenges and Opportunities of Teleworking in Latin America and The Caribbean.”
According to, Vinicius Pinheiro, ILO Director for Latin America, this new trend of remote working for labor should continue even after the pandemic is over.
Having said that, the organization also states that remote work is not for everyone. The informal job sector is big and is unable to work remotely because of the nature of such jobs. This resulted in a loss of 26 million jobs since the health crisis began.
Remote work has proved to be a boon for most industries and companies while for some others, it has been a struggle to keep up with this new way of working. Despite all of the factors that prevent a lot of industries to go fully remote, there has been a big spike in the number of people working remotely in Latin America.
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