Venezuela Unemployment Drops, despite World Crisis http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/may/27/latinamerica10052701.htm

CARACAS - Despite the world crisis, Venezuela hopes to reduce its unemployment rate to seven percent by the end of the year, after April registered 0.5 percent less than the previous month.According to the president of the National Statistics Institute, Elias Eljuri, the predicted economic recovery in the second semester will allow cutting unemployment, which is currently at 8.2 percent.

Welfare policies allow maintaining acceptable unemployment levels, with a decreasing trend despite effects of an adverse world context.Eljuri recalled that a decade ago, when Hugo Chavez assumed the presidency, unemployment rate was at 14.6 percent, and climbed to 19 percent after the oil strike, but has been decreasing steadily since then.

In April, the labor force rose by 176,000 people, but registered a little drop compared to the previous year, he added.Meanwhile, formal employment climbed from 49 percent in 1999 to 57 percent, and informal jobs dropped from 50 percent to nearly 42 percent.In the last ten years, social investment reached 330 billion dollars, five times over the one reported in the previous decade.