This means that almost one in four Mexican workers is working under critical conditions of occupation, where the Inegi includes:
- People who work less than 35 hours a week for reasons beyond their control.
- To those who work more than 35 hours per week with monthly income below the minimum wage.
- And to those who work more than 48 hours a week with income of up to two minimum wages.
This indicator is disseminated within the National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE), for the last quarter of 2021. Its objective is to illustrate the deterioration of the relationship between the number of hours worked and the remuneration received by the country’s employees.
The precarious recovery of employment
In May 2019, to take data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of the employed population that was working under these conditions was 19.3%.
Which would indicate that, after the pandemic, the recovery of employment in Mexico is being sustained by increasingly precarious jobs.
A recent report by the Labor Observatory called Citizen Action Against Poverty indicates that 60% of workers in the manufacturing industry have a salary that does not exceed the poverty threshold for two people.
With data as of the third quarter of 2021, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) estimates that 40.7% of the Mexican population lives in working poverty.
Coneval notes that this proportion fell during the third quarter of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020. However, it is still a higher proportion than the third quarter of 2019, before the pandemic, when only 38.5% of the population lived in working poverty.
A family lives in working poverty when the income from their work is not enough to acquire the goods of the basic basket.
