Labor Markets in Mexico: concepts and methodologies

Gabriel Ramírez

《拉丁美洲經貿季刊》 31期 (2017/12) Pp. 73-88

摘要

In Mexico, unemployment rates have been relatively low compared to other countries. However, this does not mean that jobs allow workers to satisfy their needs. The term underemployment has been used since the 60's to describe underutilization of the productive capacity of workers. It has been argued that informal economy, being unproductive, is the main cause of the bad quality of jobs. However, development of technology has shown that small scale enterprises, characterized as informal sector, can be in fact productive. In the last decades labor markets studies have focused on the quality of jobs from the workers' perspective, meaning that the employment must provide a good quality of life to the population. The concept of precariousness has been widely used because it relates to both, formal and informal jobs. In Mexico, an important proportion of jobs are precarious, according to indicators constructed by using kind of contract data. Labor markets studies, from a gender perspective, have shown that domestic work has to be included when analyzing workload, as women devote much of their time to domestic and caregiving duties. Besides, it is shown that commuting time can be seen as a factor of precariousness.

關鍵字

Labor markets ； work ； precariousness ； use of time