By  Felipe Lobo Ramírez - Business Administration student

Costa Rica faces great changes, each change with its own diverse set of dynamics which affects internal development yet promotes innovation. COVID-19 has generated worldwide change which in turn has provided many challenges for leaders and entrepreneurs to overcome. To avoid the contagion from spreading, commerce and markets have slowed to a mere fraction of what was once global trade as we formerly knew it. World Bank provides vast amounts of data that allow us to compare and contrast behaviors in the market and populations within time frames before the pandemic struck, this data will allow us to comprehend and understand how this global pandemic has affected our economies and day to day life. The question at hand is whether COVID 19 has presented an opportunity to reconstruct our path as a species or has it provoked humanity to step back in our social development and persistent evolution towards a cleaner more sustainable tomorrow?

When analyzing the labor force participation of males within the population of 15 years and older inside of Costa Rica, we can identify that in 2018 the percentage of male participants of the Costa Rican economy was at a 5 year high of 76.5% compared to 2020 which demonstrates a decline, World Bank reports that Costa Rica has a participation of 75.93% (World Bank, 2020). Alone this data shows us a decline of 15-year-old males and older participating within the economy. If we take a look at the unemployment percent of the male labor force within Costa Rica, we can identify that in 2019 Costa Rica had a 9.93% unemployment rate in comparison to the beginning of 2020 when Costa Rica has a 10.68% of unemployment. We can clearly come to terms that the data for the end of 2020 has not been released and is not available within online platforms and the data being analyzed represents the beginning of 2020, so we can conclude that Costa Rica’s unemployment rate has escalated although the percentage of male participation has increased. What we can see from life expectancy at birth within males in Costa Rica being at a 77.93 years and females being at 82.73 years in 2018 which was the last updated year of this data type and it has demonstrated an increase which has continuously elevated through continuous innovations in the medical sector, these innovations and developments have increased human life tremendously in these postmodern times.

One thing is certain for humanity, like that old saying goes, “when the situations get tough the tough get going”. Humankind has a tenacity for survival and continuous optimization, the road to development and innovation within Costa Rica is not an easy task, but a task nevertheless that needs to be overcome with steadfastness and persistency to not only protect our ecosystem but to find harmony within our surroundings, and continuously drive forward our economic markets which provide resources and materials to continue internal growth both in the productive sector and the growth within our population.

 

MOXIE es el Canal de ULACIT (www.ulacit.ac.cr), producido por y para los estudiantes universitarios, en alianza con el medio periodístico independiente Delfino.cr, con el propósito de brindarles un espacio para generar y difundir sus ideas.  Se llama Moxie - que en inglés urbano significa tener la capacidad de enfrentar las dificultades con inteligencia, audacia y valentía - en honor a nuestros alumnos, cuyo “moxie” los caracteriza.

References:
  • World Bank. (2020). Unemployment, male (% of male labor force) (modeled ILO estimate) - Costa Rica. Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.MA.ZS?end=2020&locations=CR&start=2017.