Santo Domingo.- The government of President Luis Abinader highlighted the results presented by the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, which indicate that the Dominican economy registered an increase in the average year-on-year of 133,915 more people working during the year 2025, raising the average total of employed people to 5,139,951 workers, according to the results of the Continuous National Labor Force Survey (ENCFT).
The
employment growth was mainly driven by the generation of
formal jobs, which contributed 131,901 new employed, equivalent to
98.5% of the total, which contributed to the average informality rate falling to
54.1% in 2025, 1.4 percentage points lower than the
55.5% recorded in 2024.
At the close of the fourth quarter (October-December) of 2025, the total number of employed reached
5,168,878 workers, for a year-on-year increase of
117,948 new net jobs. Of this total,
72.7% (85,764) corresponded to formal workers, while
27.3% (32,184) were informal. In that period, the informality rate stood at
54.2%, 0.6 percentage points below the same quarter of the previous year.
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The report highlights that job creation was mainly concentrated in the female population, reflecting a
greater integration of women into the labor market.
Regarding the main labor market indicators, the employment rate averaged
62.9% in 2025 and the overall participation rate reached
66.2%, both historical values in their respective annual series, evidencing a high relative participation in the labor market.
Regarding the open unemployment rate (SU1), this stood at
5.0 % both in the annual average and in the quarter
October-December 2025, showing a reduction of 0.1 percentage points compared to 2024. Likewise, the expanded underutilization rate (SU3) fell to
9.2 % at the end of the year.
The Central Bank highlighted that the
sustained growth of formal employment has allowed a significant reduction in informality since the historical high of
58.9% recorded during the pandemic, keeping the country around the regional median compared to other economies in
Latin America.
The institution indicated that the expansion of employment, the main source of household income, along with the
social programs implemented, has strengthened the purchasing power of the population and contributed to more Dominicans
overcoming the monetary poverty threshold.
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With these results, the Dominican labor market closed 2025 with employment indicators close to
historical highs and unemployment levels around their lowest since the beginning of the statistical series of the
ENCFT in 2014.
