IT Workforce

Chile is attempting to position itself as an attractive location for technology driven FDI. In part, the success of this strategy lies in its ability to guarantee valuable human capital, which has led Chile to make the improvement of its workforce a central focus in its effort.

In Chile the foundation is good. Its educational system is widely recognized as one of the best in the region. Still it ranks lower than other emerging economies, such as some Asian nations, in the fields of mathematics and science. Nonetheless, the nation's literacy rate is high at 96%. While the average schooling that individuals receive is 10.6 years, about 31.4% of the population pursues higher education. Chilean expenditures on education in 2003 represented 7.2% of GDP [7].

Chile 's education is delivered through its various institutions that, as of 2003, consisted of over 60 universities, 48 professional institutes and 109 technical centers. There are 21 MBA programs in the country. Specifically regarding the fields of science and technology, interest among students in this field relative to other nations can be seen below:

Source: Human Development Report, UNDP 2001 and World Development Indicators, The World Bank 2001

A certain level of English proficiency is required in order to obtain an engineering or technical degree, however Chile 's workforce is not considered among the most fluent in comparison with other nations.

According to 2002 figures, the workforce in Chile comprised 5.9 million out of a total population just over 151 million. Of those, 2.4 million are located in the nation's capital, Santiago . Unemployment was at 8.5% as of 2003 [7]. Some Chilean laws have been designed to protect national jobs. For instance, any company with 25 employees or more may not employ foreigners in excess of 15% of their workforce. The only case in which this can be ignored is when the skills required to fulfill the job are not available in Chile [8].

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