Level of Mexico's 'Informal Economy' is 'Alarming' - Business Organization

Proceso: Juan Carlos Cruz Vargas

Mexico City - The Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco-ServyTur) considered the high levels of informal employment prevailing in Mexico to be "alarming".

Chaired by Jorge Dávila Flores, the organization declared that the new criteria adopted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) permits accurate assessment of the seriousness of informal employment in Mexico, which has now reached 29.3 million people and represents 60.1 percent of a total 48.7 million workers.

And more: this figure is nearly double the number of formal jobs registered by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), at 16 million, and far exceeds INEGI's earlier estimates of 14.2 million people employed in the informal sector.

For the leader of the business organization, it is necessary to reactivate "immediately" the work of the Interdepartmental Commission to combat not only informal employment, but the illegal economy, which includes piracy [CDs, etc.], smuggling and peddling.

Concanaco considered that the next comprehensive tax reform should include incentives to gradually incorporate the informal economy into the formal economy, so that they [businesses] may pay taxes or at least fixed quotas to avoid tax evasion.

On Tuesday, December 11, the INEGI President, Eduardo Sojo, acknowledged that

"the Mexican labor market is characterized by a group of workers who are vulnerable because they are not within a legal framework; the informal term is synonymous with vulnerability because there is a lack of [employment] contracts and where to register protest in case of unfair dismissal."

With new figures released by INEGI, the labor market in Mexico is this: 19.4 million formal jobs; 29.3 million, informal; more than 4 million underemployed; and 2.5 million unemployed Mexicans. Spanish original