Can Transport Promote Future Employment for Women in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Women constitute nearly 50 percent of the working-age population in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, only 43 percent of employed persons are women, and nearly half work in informal jobs. This gap not only reflects persistent inequality but also a significant loss of potential productivity for the region.

At the same time, different growth scenarios show that the transport sector will be one of the main engines of formal employment growth in the next decade. These jobs, which range from operational functions to technical and coordination roles, often offer greater stability and territorial coverage as well as better salaries than those where female employment is concentrated today.

The challenge is not only to increase women’s labor force participation, but also to facilitate the transition toward sectors with better growth prospects. Through the use of tools developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a skills-based approach can identify viable transitions toward the transport sector. This approach provides a solid foundation for the design of more effective employment and training policies in the region.

Demographic and educational changes in recent decades brought about a sustained increase in women’s participation in the labor force in our region. However, this progress seems to have stalled: the participation of women in the labor force is approximately 23 percentage points below that of men.   

Youth labor force indicators also are not expected to improve in the short term: almost one out of every four women between the ages of 15 and 24 in the region neither studies nor works, and female unemployment among this age group is above 16 percent.

Women’s employment in our region is concentrated in administrative roles, marketing, sales, customer service, cleaning, and personal services that, taken together, account for nearly 46 percent of total female employment.

Many of these occupations are projected to grow moderately or negatively, and they are more susceptible to processes of automation driven by Artificial Intelligence. 

In Latin America, two structural processes are transforming the demand for labor: the transition toward cleaner energy matrices and the expansion of digital connectivity.

In a successful energy transition, employment growth would be concentrated in infrastructure-intensive activities and physical production, such as construction, manufacturing, and transport. Something similar would occur in scenarios of digital expansion, where the deployment and maintenance of networks require investments in infrastructure and operational logistics.                                 

Occupations linked to the transport value chain, characterized by labor conditions that are generally above average, stand at the intersection of those scenarios. These include workers in mining, construction, manufacturing, and transport; workers in metallurgy and machinery; workers in electrical and electronics trades; and others.   

Projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2024–2034, applied to the occupational structure of Latin America, suggest that operational jobs related to transport and infrastructure could represent nearly 25 percent of total employment growth. To this can be added technical and specialized trades linked to the sector, which could contribute an additional 10 percent.                                                     

This growth exceeds what is projected for the various occupational areas where women’s employment is concentrated today. The main challenge, therefore, is not the lack of demand, but rather the gap between these opportunities and the current labor profiles of many women.

This challenge can be addressed progressively if female labor profiles closer to the requirements of the transport sector are identified. To achieve this, we need information that allows for comparing skills between occupations and understanding which can function as viable entry points to the transport sector.

In recent years, Open Data and Big Data initiatives such as O*NET and tools such as the vacancy monitor of the IDB Labor Observatory have expanded the possibilities for analysis of the labor market. These tools allow for characterizing occupational profiles, measuring similarities between skills, and mapping plausible transitions between roles mostly occupied today by women and strategic transport jobs. 

At the IDB we have identified several entry points to the transport sector that can be grouped into two large pathways.  

1. From elementary occupations toward operational roles:   
A first group corresponds to occupations with high female participation and low labor quality, such as cleaning, assistants, garbage collection, and other elementary occupations that have a significant presence in firms linked to transport. Many of these occupations share skills that are transferable to operational roles in transport, such as conductors, mobile machine operators, or elementary occupations in construction and manufacturing. 

Access to more specialized trades, such as electrical work and electronics, requires more training, but also offers better labor prospects.

2. From administrative roles toward technical pathways:      
A second group is made up of administrative and marketing jobs, such as administrative support, sales, and information management. These occupations play key roles in the logistics chains and operation of transport that serve as entry points.                                   

From there, career paths can open up toward technical or management roles, as well as occupations linked to technology, engineering, or science that require greater specialization, but offer higher potential salaries.

At the IDB we are shifting the focus from one based on which occupations women should enter toward a more operational focus: which labor transitions have the greatest probability of concrete success and what skills should be developed for that transition.  This new strategic perspective is already being incorporated in our most recent projects. In São Paulo, for example, the electrification program for the bus fleet integrates a diagnostic of the labor and educational differences between men and women, together with training and job bridging activities. In Panama, we are promoting electromobility initiatives that include training mechanisms and financial support to expand the participation of women in the sector.                                     

However, making progress on the inclusion of women in the labor force requires going beyond increasing participation rates to focusing on the quality of the jobs to which women have access.

In a region where a large part of women’s employment is concentrated in low-productivity jobs and characterized by high informality and few opportunities for advancement, this challenge is central both to economic growth as well as the reduction of poverty.                       
In this sense, the transport sector represents a strategic opportunity. Its role in the energy transition and digital expansion positions the sector as an engine of formal employment expansion over the next decade.

However, taking advantage of this opportunity requires closing the gap between these occupations and the labor profiles of many women. A skills-based approach allows for addressing this imbalance operationally by identifying viable labor transitions from  occupations where women already participate to new roles in order to more effectively design recruitment, training, and labor assistance.

To learn more about how the IDB supports the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in the design of employment, training, and labor mobility policies, we invite you to explore our studies, labor market analysis tools, and transport sector projects.