This research examines the possible determinants of unemployment in Colombia in XXI century, by using a cointegrated VAR-X. Cointegration analysis statistically casts a long-term relationship between the variables: terms of trade, real sales, labor productivity, employment, real wages and unemployment. The estimation of the model and the results of impulse response analysis, allow concluding that real sales are an important factor for unemployment in the short term, while productivity is important in the medium and long term. This analysis is confirmed by the results obtained from the variance decomposition.