ILO: 44 Percent of Mexican Jobs at Risk

The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that in just five months of 2020, more jobs were eliminated in Mexico than created in all of 2019. In addition, the country's labor situation, one of the weakest among all OECD member countries, could worsen. According to the report ‘Mexico and the Crisis of COVID-19 in the World of Work: Answers and Challenges’ published by ILO, 44 percent of the jobs in Mexico could be in danger. This means about 24 million workers could lose their jobs or see their wages reduced before the end of 2020.

During his morning press conference, President López Obrador acknowledged the gravity of the situation but was optimistic about the future. “We continue to recover jobs. We have already recovered 250,000 of the 1 million we lost at the beginning of the pandemic,” the president said. “Most of those jobs that were lost at the beginning of the pandemic belonged to the informal sector, the most affected in Mexico. The employment rate in the informal sector has been recovering since May. In the months of July and August we already reached levels similar to those before the pandemic,” ILO said in its report.

ILO also refers to the labor gap that exists in Mexico between men and women and warns that the differences between both could become more acute in times of pandemic. “Women are suffering from pre-existing negative conditions in the Mexican labor market and the crisis is likely to worsen these,” ILO says.

Mexico is too familiar with dealing with crisis after 2008. It took the country seven years to recover its formal workforce levels, while informal employment took four years to return to pre-crisis numbers. In the current context, according to ILO, the industries that will suffer the most will be manufacturing, tourism, real estate and the food sector.