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 average year-on-year increase 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 provided 131,901 new employed, equivalent to 98.5% of the total, which contributed to the average informality rate decreasing to 54.1% in 2025, 1.4 percentage points lower than the 55.5% recorded in 2024.
By the end 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 net new 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.
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.
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Regarding the open unemployment rate (SU1), it stood at 5.0% in both the annual average and the October-December quarter of 2025, showing a reduction of 0.1 percentage points compared to 2024. Likewise, the expanded underutilization rate (SU3) decreased to 9.2% at the end of the year.
The Central Bank highlighted that the sustained growth of formal employment has significantly reduced informality since the historical high of 58.9% recorded during the pandemic, keeping the country around the regional median compared to other Latin American economies.
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 ENCFT statistical series in 2014.
