Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
Labor
The structure of the Dominican labor force began to change
significantly during the post-Trujillo era as agriculture's share
of output diminished. In 1950 agriculture had employed 73
percent of the country's labor, but by the end of the 1980s it
accounted for as little as 35 percent. In mid-1996 the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that agriculture,
forestry, and fishing employed only 20 percent of the labor
force. Industry and services had incorporated approximately
20 percent and 45 percent, respectively, of displaced agricultural
labor (see table 6, Appendix). As a consequence of gaps
in the labor statistics, official estimates of the female segment
of the economically active population varied widely, from 15 to
30 percent of the labor force. Whatever the total figures, the
role of women, particularly in the urban economy, was growing
by the late 1980s. Seventy percent of the employees in freetrade
zones (FTZs) were women; as greater numbers of FTZs
opened in the late 1980s, the rate of employment for females
more than doubled the rate of employment for males. This
shift represented a major transformation in the labor force;
previously, the percentage of women in the Dominican work
force had been lower than that for any other Latin American
country. Men continued to dominate agricultural jobs, but
these were among the lowest paid jobs in the country. The
highest salaries were earned in mining, private utilities, financial
services, and commerce. The distribution of income
among workers was highly skewed; the top 10 percent earned
39 percent of national income, while the bottom 50 percent
earned only 19 percent.
Income distribution continued to be skewed in the 1990s,
with the top 20 percent of the population earning 60 percent
of the country's total income in 1994, and the bottom 20 percent
earning only 4.5 percent. A 1992 World Bank report classified
4.6 million Dominicans as poor, with 2.8 million living in
extreme poverty. About 10 to 15 percent of the total workforce,
estimated at 2.84 million in 1994, are union members. Official
statistics put the average unemployment rate at 15.6 percent
for the 1994-95 period, compared with 20.7 percent for the
1992-93 period. Approximately 15 percent of the economically
active population are engaged in agriculture; 23 percent in
industry; 27 percent in tourism, trade, and finance; and 35 percent
in other services and government employ. Although the
administration of President Fernandez is committed in princi-
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