The lack of employment relaxed a bit in Mexico. In the second quarter of the year, the unemployment rate stood at 3.2%, a reduction of one percentage point compared to the 4.2% registered during the same period of 2021, as reported this Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). The number of people without work was 1.9 million, 500,000 less than last year. While, compared to the first quarter of 2022, unemployment only fell 0.3%.
According to the results of the National Occupation and Employment Survey, in the second quarter of 2022, the Economically Active Population (PEA) was 59.3 million people, 1.7 million more than in the same period of 2021. “The PEA represented 59.9% of the population aged 15 and over,” the report states. A total of 57.4 million people were employed, 2.2 million more people compared to the same period of the previous year, it details.
Although employment rose, so did informality: more than 32 million people worked in this sector from April to June of this year. This represented 55.7% of the employed population, 985,000 more people compared to the same period in 2021. This category includes work without guarantees by law in agricultural activity, paid domestic service, as well as subordinate workers who, although they work for formal economic units, do so without social security. The highest rates of labor informality were reported in the southeast of the country, in the States of Oaxaca, with 80.5%; Guerrero, 79.7%, and Chiapas, 76.2%.
The high informality of the economy makes it difficult to accurately quantify unemployment in the country, so the Inegi unemployment rate is an approximation. The Institute also reported on Thursday that economic activity fell 0.14% during July compared to the previous month, according to a preliminary estimate. This would be the third consecutive monthly decline.
The change in the employment rate “was concentrated in restaurants and lodging services with an increase of 546,000 people; in the manufacturing industry, 482,000, and in commerce, 465,000″, indicates the report. In addition, the number of people employed in micro-businesses grew by 1.1 million; 440,000 in large establishments, and 398,000 in small businesses.
The number of underemployed people, that is, those who need to work longer or are looking for a job with longer hours, reached 5.1 million. This represented a rate of 8.9% of the employed population, 13.3% less in relation to the same period in 2021. The cities with the highest rate of underemployment were Ciudad del Carmen, with 27%, Coatzacoalcos, 20.8 %, and Tlaxcala, 18.2%.
