More Boricuas are jumping into the job hunt: employment climbs to 1,171,000 in July, but unemployment also rises to 6%

Puerto Rico's labor market moved hard in July, and in two directions at once. There are now 1,171,000 people employed on the island, up 7,000 from June, and the labor participation rate climbed to 46%, its highest level in years ¹². But at the same time, the unemployment rate rose to 6%, because the number of people who went out looking for work grew faster than the jobs available ²³. In other words: more money is flowing into Boricua households, but there is also more competition for every opening.

Where we are coming from

For decades, labor participation was the Achilles heel of Puerto Rico's economy. While the U.S. rate hovers around 62%, the island spent years stuck near 40%, with hundreds of thousands of working-age people completely outside the labor market. The fact that the rate hit 46% in July, a jump of 2 percentage points in a single year, is a sign something is changing: more people who were on the sidelines decided to get in the game and look for work ¹². The data comes from the Labor Force Survey published by the Department of Labor and Human Resources (DTRH), and was released this week by Secretary María del Pilar Vélez Casanova, who said the increase of 12,000 people in the labor force and 7,000 more employed than a year ago are signals we should view with optimism ²³.

The numbers, no sugarcoating

Here is what the DTRH measured for July 2026, seasonally adjusted ¹²³:

• Employed persons: 1,171,000, up 7,000 from June and up 7,000 from July 2025 (1,164,000).
• Labor force (working or looking for work): 1,245,000, up 9,000 for the month and 12,000 for the year.
• Unemployed: 75,000, about 5,000 more than a year ago.
• Unemployment rate: 6%, up 0.2 points from June's 5.8% and 0.4 points from July 2025's 5.6%.
• Labor participation rate: 46%, up 0.8 points from 45.2% in June and a full 2 points from 44% a year ago.
• Non-farm payroll employment: 957,900 jobs.

By sector, the biggest hirers over the year were recreation and lodging (+4,900 jobs), education and health (+4,600), and trade, transportation and utilities (+2,100). On the losing side: professional and business services (-1,900), government (-1,300), information (-500) and finance (-200) ²³. For the month, education and health added 1,500 jobs and manufacturing added 300, while recreation and lodging shed 800 ².

What it means for you

If you are job hunting, the news is bittersweet. There are more openings than a year ago, but there are also 12,000 more people competing for them, which is why unemployment rose even as employment grew ³. The smart move is to target the sectors that are actually hiring: health, education and tourism are the engines right now, not professional services offices, which have been cutting for a year ²³. If you already have a job, a market with rising participation and still relatively low unemployment gives you some leverage to negotiate salary or look for something better, especially in health care or hospitality. And if you were out of the labor market entirely, the numbers say thousands of people like you are coming back and landing jobs, so it is not crazy to try.

How to do it / Checklist

1. Search government job openings at empleos.pr.gov, where the DTRH and agencies post active postings with application deadlines.
2. If you lost your job, file your unemployment claim as soon as possible through the DTRH portal (trabajo.pr.gov) or by calling (787) 945-7900; the benefit is not retroactive to when you lost the job, only to when you file.
3. Focus your search on health, education, tourism and retail, the sectors that added thousands of jobs over the past year ².
4. Watch for DTRH and municipal job fairs; they are announced at trabajo.pr.gov and on the agency's social media.
5. If you need training to switch sectors, ask your local American Job Center about training paid for with federal WIOA funds, at no cost to you.

What's next

The million-dollar question is whether the economy can keep absorbing all these new people entering the market. If employment does not grow at the pace of participation, unemployment will keep creeping up, as it already did in July ³. On top of that, this year's oil shock keeps pressuring business costs, and that could cool hiring in the coming months. The DTRH publishes the August report in mid-September; that is when we will know whether the participation jump was a one-time spike or the start of a trend. For now, the message is clear: Boricuas are answering the labor shortage by going out to work, and even with the uptick in unemployment, that is some of the best economic news of the year.

Sources

1. Department of Labor and Human Resources — trabajo.pr.gov
2. El Vocero — Employment and labor participation rise in Puerto Rico during July
3. NotiCel — Dramatic increase in the number of people working, but unemployment grows
4. Primera Hora — An increase in employed persons was recorded in July