Coronavirus Pandemic Destroys 12.5 Million Jobs in Mexico

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Around 12.5 million workers have lost their jobs in Mexico due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Of these, 10.4 million were casual workers in the informal economy. In particular, the loss of informal jobs, in which people work on their own responsibility and without social protection, is causing severe social problems. The figures were released by the National Institute for Geography and Statistics (INEGI).

The data are based on the first telephone survey on occupation and employment (ETOE), conducted last month. It also found that the number of people with reduced working hours has increased. In March there were 5.1 million, four weeks later there were 11 million.

The proportion of respondents who said they had an active job fell from 55.8 million in March to 43.8 in April, while the number of those looking for work or unemployed rose from 38.7 million to 50.2 million.

A total of 20 million people are currently unemployed: 12.5 million have lost their jobs during the pandemic while 5.8 million were already unemployed before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, some 1.7 million people had no opportunity to find employment on the labor market.

According to the ETOE, small businesses had 22.8 million employees before the pandemic, but now there are 13.7 million. The retail sector reduced the number of jobs from 8.2 million to 6.2 million, while medium-sized retailers reduced from 5.5 million to 5 million and large companies from 5.1 million to 3.8 million.

In contrast, the Mexican authorities increased the number of government jobs from 5.4 to 5.9 million.

Data collection is typically conducted through personal interviews. However, due to the pandemic, this time the survey was conducted by telephone and, according to INEGI, should be considered experimental.

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