Informality torments the country's poorest states. In 15 of the 31 states, plus the Federal District, the rate of informal [work for cash, without contracts or benefits] exceeds the national average, which is 59% of the total employed population.
Oaxaca tops the list with 80.5% of people informally employed, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) available through the first quarter of 2013.
Following is Guerrero, with 79.2%; Chiapas, with 78.1%; Hidalgo, 74.3%; Puebla, 74.2%, Tlaxcala, 73.4%; Michoacan, 71.6%; Veracruz, 67.3%; Morelos, 66.5%; Zacatecas, 65.8%; Yucatan , 64.9%; Nayarit, 64.1%; Campeche and Guanajuato, with 62.5%, and Tabasco, with 61.2%.
The three states with the highest levels of informality also have the highest percentage of population in poverty, according to Coneval [National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy].
According to INEGI, more than 28 million people were working in the informal economy in the first quarter.
...Experts say that the main problems faced by the states and the federal government have to do with the lack of social security benefits and retirement savings, which end up affecting the medium-term public finances of the nation. ...
According to experts in the field, high levels of non-formal employment indicate that investment flows either do not reach or are scarce and insufficient to generate legal infrastructure and industrial sources, although all these entities receive significant amounts of money through federal contributions and the use of private bank loans.
... However, analysts says that this federal funding stream, and bank loans, have not resulted in creating infrastructure and the generation of formal jobs that help reduce the informality rates in the states.
For Raymundo Tenorio Aguilar, director of careers in Economics in the Business School at the Monterrey Tech campus in Santa Fe [Mexico City], informality levels in these entities are dramatic and indicate that people who do not have access to formal jobs are forced to engage in survival activities.
"It means that the generation of formal employment in these states is awful. Because the local economy doesn't grow, people seek to make a living through informal activities," said the specialist...César Velázquez Guadarrama, coordinator of the Masters in Public Policy at the Iberoamerican University, said that informal activities are less productive than formal ones, and lower productivity lowers economic growth, as Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray has pointed out.
In an interview with Excelsior, he explained that informality stems from multiple factors, among which he highlighted people's level of education and the skills they have to perform certain jobs, which are sometimes down through families.
... To this, the experts agreed, must be add that the population without formal work has no access to social security [health insurance, pension and housing credits] or the ability to save for retirement. In the long term, this becomes an extra expense for local and federal governments.
According to INEGI, the number of persons employed in the informal economy in the January-March period of 2013 totaled 28,182,845, which was 0.2% lower compared to the figure for the first quarter of 2012, which was 28,225,692 individuals.
The employed population reached 47.8 million people in the first quarter of 2013, i.e., 630,000 more than the 47.1 million recorded in the same period last year.
It also reported that the underemployed, who need more work, was 3.9 million.
Only 17 states in the country, representing 52.1% of the total, have lower informality rates than the national average... However, some of them have more than 50 percent of their population working in the informal sector. These are Quintana Roo, 51.5%, Sinaloa, 53.4%; Colima, 55.3%; Jalisco, 55.7%; Durango, 56.4%, State of Mexico, 57.1%, and San Luis Potosi, 58.1%.
The states with the lowest levels of informality are Chihuahua, 39.3%, Nuevo León, 39.7%, Coahuila, 41.3%, Baja California Sur, 42.5%, Baja California, 43%; Sonora, 44.1%; Queretaro , 48.3%; Aguascalientes, 48.8%; Tamaulipas, 49.7%, and the Federal District, with 50%.
... From January to March of this year, according to data from INEGI, the unemployed population stood at 2.5 million people, representing 4.9% of the Economically Active Population (EAP), equal to that in the same period of 2012. Spanish original