In the last quarter of 2021, the number of people who earn between 1 and 2 minimum wages, the second lowest level of income in Mexico, reported 19,940,225 million, a figure not seen in the Inegi records and which represented an increase of 2 million 504,165 more people compared to the last quarter of 2019, prior to the pandemic.
In the same period, the number of those who earn more than five salaries decreased by 712,273, reporting only 1 million 299,638 people with this income level.
“Yes, we have seen that a large part of the jobs that have recovered have been those in which relatively low wages are paid and if we add down, there are 5.3 million more people,” commented the chief economist of the bank Ve by More, Alejandro Saldaña.
The effects were not in lower income, it also increased the number of hours worked, and increased the number of people without access to social security.
Saldaña warned that this deterioration plus inflation could have an impact on the poverty figures in the country.
The latest analysis of working conditions in Mexico, by the Decent Work Observatory, states that these conditions are in conflict with the norms of the right to decent work established in the Constitution.
“This violation of labor rights constitutes one of the main causes of the levels of poverty in our country,” the document refers.
It stands out that it is in the manufacturing industry that the most workers have no access to social security, followed by the professional, financial and corporate services sector.
How to improve the quality of employment?
Gabriela Siller, director of financial economic analysis at Banco Base, commented that the increase in the quality of employment is related to economic activity, since the more the GDP grows, the more employment and its quality will advance.
“In order to grow, a fiscal policy could be implemented focused on public spending that generates a multiplier effect on the economy and can be done with greater spending on physical investment (…) when a project is carried out that is financially and socially profitable, a peso is spent , but the effect on the economy is greater than that weight because it makes the economy grow faster,” he explained.
“For wages to grow in a sustained and important way, it has to be accompanied by an increase in labor productivity, and that productivity is obtained through investing in machinery, equipment, technology, and education. So if there is no investment, it will be difficult for us to see an important and sustained growth in wages, ”said the chief economist of Ve por Más.
