Nestor Jimenez
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, February 22, 2022, p. eleven
In Mexico, the largest number of workers in both the formal and informal sectors are sales employees, dispatchers and shop assistants; there are 3.2 million people who are dedicated to it. They are followed by merchants in establishments with 2.8 million, as well as support workers in agricultural activities, with 2.3 million.
Along with domestic workers and those who focus on the cultivation of corn and beans, these five activities represent 20 percent of the entire labor force in the country.
According to data from the Ministry of Economy based on the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE), other jobs that abound the most are those grouped in the support sector in various administrative activities, that is, auxiliary staff , in which 2.32 percent of Mexicans work, while bricklayers and construction workers represent 5.5 percent.
In addition, 1.6 percent of the workers are taco workers or fast food preparers, snacks, pizzas, hot dogs or juices. Some 884 thousand people throughout the Mexican Republic are dedicated to it.
Miguel Calderón Chelius, coordinator of the Salary Observatory of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla, explained that the current scenario, in which the majority of the population is dedicated to dispatching in stores, is due in part to the growth of commercial chains such as Oxxo, among others.
Although convenience store chains and shopping malls generate more jobs, all of these sectors are among the lowest paid.
There are long-term processes that have taken place in Mexico. From being an agricultural economy we became an industrial economy and now a service economy. The data shows a concentration of the service sector, but on the lower scale, in low-skilled, low-paid positions, with higher turnover and fewer benefits.
he detailed.
Upturn in trade and basic services
The commerce and basic services sectors, as well as food preparation, also had a greater rebound during the pandemic; On the other hand, other areas have lost personnel, mainly in the industrial or professional sector, in which higher salaries were reported.
These areas are not going to start growing until there is a full recovery of the economy
, he underlined. Although there has recently been an increase in job creation, it is not necessarily the same activities, but rather the areas that have generated new demand.
Calderón Chelius anticipated that the sources of work will be modified in a few years due to the advancement of technologies and automation processes.
In the statistics exposed in the Data México platform, of the Ministry of Economy, it is shown that 4.1 percent of the country’s workers are drivers of buses, trucks, passenger cars or cargo units. More than 2.2 million people have this job.
