In an attempt to paint an optimistic picture, the government celebrates the creation of 26,000 jobs in 2025 as a significant achievement. However, this narrative ignores a deeper and more worrying reality: the generation of new jobs is slowing down alarmingly. From the 40,000 net jobs created in 2022, we rose to 37,000 in 2023, 35,000 in 2024 and just 26,000 in 2025, representing a cumulative drop of 35%. Although the total stock of employment is slowly increasing, economic dynamism is plummeting, and this has consequences that go far beyond superficial statistics
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To understand this phenomenon, it is essential not to limit ourselves to what is seen with the naked eye, such as those 26,000 positions announced with fanfare and fanfare. In economics, policies that generate visible results in the short term often hide side effects that affect the entire society in the long term. Imagine that the government invests resources in subsidies, regulations, or specific programs to “create” employment. These efforts can generate immediate jobs in favored sectors, but at what cost? Every resource allocated to these programs is extracted from somewhere else: higher taxes, growing public debt, or inflation that erodes the purchasing power of citizens. What is created in one area is destroyed in another, in an invisible but real way
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Let's take an everyday example to illustrate this. Suppose that public money is allocated to an infrastructure project that generates thousands of temporary jobs. At first glance, it seems like a success: contract workers, paid salaries and ongoing economic activity. But what you can't see is the money that was taken away from taxpayers or private companies, who could have used it to invest in innovations, expand their operations or hire more people in more productive sectors. That “missing” money could have boosted the creation of sustainable jobs, based on real market demand and not on bureaucratic decisions. Instead of organic and dynamic growth, we end up with a stagnation where net new employment declines year after year
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In the Uruguayan case, this downward trend — from 40,000 to 26,000 in just four years — reveals a structural problem. The employment stock is rising, yes, but at an increasingly slow pace because the system does not foster the vitality necessary to generate fresh opportunities. Why is this happening? Interventionist policies, such as strict labor regulations, high tax burdens or selective subsidies, discourage entrepreneurs and companies from taking risks. An entrepreneur who sees their margins reduced by taxes or complex regulations chooses not to expand, not to innovate and, ultimately, not to hire. The result is “slumped dynamism”: fewer startups, less private investment, and an economy that increasingly depends on state injections rather than
individual creativity.
In addition, we must consider the effects on all groups, not just on direct beneficiaries. The 26,000 jobs created could help families in the short term, but the general drop in job creation affects millions: young people who enter the labor market without opportunities, skilled workers who migrate in search of better horizons, and consumers who face higher prices due to economic inefficiency. If the rate of new job creation continues to fall by a cumulative 35%, let's project the medium-term consequences: anemic economic growth, greater dependence on state assistance and a less prosperous society in general. The visible—the advertised jobs—distracts from the invisible: lost opportunities, delayed dreams, and frustrated
economic potential.
In short, celebrating isolated figures without examining the whole picture is like admiring a broken window due to the employment it generates in glaziers, ignoring the cost of what could have been done with that money intact. To reverse this trend, Uruguay needs policies that prioritize economic freedom, reduce barriers and allow the market to generate employment in a natural and sustainable way. Only in this way will we move from slow and artificial growth to a vigorous and real one, benefiting not only a few, but the whole of society in the long
term.
