In almost every country in the world, the percentage of women who lost their jobs due to the pandemic was higher than that of men. The highest unemployment occurred, as was perhaps to be expected, in the case of mothers, because due to confinement they had to dedicate more hours, even more hours, to caring for their children and the rest of their family.
A second important factor was that throughout the world the service sector, such as tourism, suffered from the pandemic more pronounced falls on average than the manufacturing sector. And, except for some maquiladora companies, Mexican workers tend to work predominantly in the service sector.
Now why is the second word at the beginning of the first paragraph “almost”? The reason is that in the ILO Observatory bulletin of September last year, the International Labor Organization made the following statement, which at first glance would seem somewhat surprising: “the relative decline in employment is greater in the case of women than men for all countries, with several exceptions (for example, Israel, France and Mexico) ”. But was that really true in the case of Mexico?
Well, I wish it had been so, but it wasn’t. In underdeveloped countries like ours, you always have to distinguish between the formal sector and the informal sector. This distinction is especially important in the labor market, because when in Mexico you have a job in the private sector and if it is formal, you are entitled, in particular, to better employment benefits, protected by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS ).
But when you work in the informal sector, you have, unfortunately, very few rights.
According to official IMSS data, in February 2020, when the peak of jobs in the formal sector was registered before the pandemic, the number of workers assigned to the institute was around 20.6 million Mexicans formally employed. By July 2020, the worst month during the pandemic, that number had dropped to 19.5 million. How much of that loss, of more than a million jobs, corresponded to women? The total percentage of that fall, which even today has not been fully recovered, was of the order of 5.7% in jobs. In the case of women, this drop was 5.2%, somewhat lower, while in the case of men it was 6.1%. Seen this way, the ILO claim has some support.
But once the total number of Mexicans employed in both the formal and informal sectors is considered, the situation changes significantly.
Before the pandemic, about 55 million people were busy, in one way or another, while another two were looking for work. Today, due to the crisis, there are several million who have already lost hope of finding a job and are no longer even registered in the so-called economically active population (EAP).
In the case of men the decrease in the EAP was four percent, while in the case of women the decrease was almost ten percent.
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