Colombia’s Rural Unemployment Rate Improved To 7.6% For February 2025

In February 2025, Colombia’s rural sector reached its lowest level of unemployment in six years, with an unemployment rate of 7.6%, improving 1.7 percentage points compared to the same month of the previous year (9.3%). This result is complemented by the historic increase in employment in the rural sector, which reached 4.9 million employed people; which represents an increase of 267 thousand people (+5.8%) compared to February 2024; a figure that constitutes the highest level of employment recorded for February since 2001, when comparable data began to be available.

In addition, agriculture, livestock, hunting, forestry and fishing, one of the country’s main economic activities, registered its highest employment figure in February in the last six years, with 3.4 million people employed; which represents an increase of 131 thousand people (4.0%) compared to the same month of the previous year. This sector remains the second economic activity that employs the most people in the country, with a share of 14.3% in the national total.

Dora Inés Rey, acting director of the UPRA, highlighted: “The record employment in the rural sector and the significant improvement in the unemployment rate show the progress we are making to strengthen employment in rural areas of Colombia. These results reflect the commitment of Colombians to agricultural productivity and the countryside; and, from the UPRA, we continue working to generate information that allows the planning of the sector and, in turn, its development to promote more formal and quality employment”.

In terms of the employed population at the national level, in February 2025, the unemployment rate was 10.3%; an improvement of 1.3 percentage points compared to February 2024. And the country’s employed population reached 23.5 million, which represents an increase of 977 thousand people (+4.3%) compared to the same month of the previous year.

Photo credit: Colombia’s Rural Agricultural Planning Unit.