The paid home employment in Mexico it continues below the level reported prior to the pandemic with almost 236,000 people still unemployed, mainly women, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). This is because the jobs recovered in almost all sectors have been mostly for men; As long as women cannot re-enter the labor market, they will continue to replace the activities carried out by domestic workers, explains the economist Aranxa Sánchez.
In fact, there is currently a higher proportion of men employed in the Work from home than at the beginning of last year. In the first quarter of 2020 they represented 8% of people in paid domestic activities and for the third quarter of this year they rose to 11%, according to data from the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE).
Before covid-19 appeared in Mexico —that is, in the last quarter of 2019—, there was 2.4 million people domestic workers. Nine out of 10 people in this sector were women who cleaned, washed, ironed, did the shopping, prepared food and took care of other people. The men who are included in paid domestic activities are gardeners, drivers or butlers, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).
For the first quarter of 2020, the figure fell to 2.3 million. In that period, the Mexican authorities had already reported on the first contagions of covid-19, they closed the schools in mid-March and at the end of that month they decreed the confinement and suspension of economic activities considered non-essential.
Thousands of plant household employees they were trapped in the houses where they worked, subject to longer hours and with more tasks to do, and others were fired without payment, as reported by the National Union of Domestic Workers (Sinactraho).
The third quarter of last year (July-September) was the one with the highest unemployment for domestic workers since 2015. At that time there were just over 1 million 954,000 people working in this sector. One year later, the figure reported by Inegi for October 2021 is a little more than 2.1 million people in one of these occupations.
Female unemployment and labor poverty
“The groups most affected have been those who, due to the type of work they do, cannot telework. In this area are women, who, in addition to suffering falls in employment, had to withdraw from the labor market to carry out care and household tasks, “says the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in the latest edition of the report. Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Labor dynamics in a crisis of unprecedented characteristics: policy challenges.
In the first quarter of 2020 there were more than 55 million people employed in the different sectors of the economy in Mexico. 60.5% were represented by men and 39.5% by women. For the third quarter of that year, the population that was still working fell to just over 50 million, 62% were men and 38% were women. That is, in the most difficult season to find a job or continue in one, men increased their participation in the labor market and women decreased it.
After the most difficult months, little by little employment has been recovering, even the current occupation level is better than that of the beginning of last year, because by October 2021 there were more than 56.3 million people employed. But they have been mens who have benefited the most, since now 61% of the positions are occupied by them, while the women they participate in 39% of the places.
“We are almost two years after the pandemic began and women have not returned to jobs, unlike men,” says Aranxa Sánchez, an economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “When talking about the recovery of employment, it is assumed that everything is improving, but most of these positions are for the male sector and that has consequences in the paid work from home”.
Unless there is a public policy like a care system, in which the private sector is also involved, this trend will not change, predicts the specialist. “There should be a recovery of work in general and at the same time equitable for men and women”, which is almost impossible as long as they continue to maintain that they were born to care.
That idea may be rejected by many people, but in fact, women still contributed most of the value of housework and care in 2020, according to the latest Inegi report on the matter. Men were responsible for 27% of these tasks; women, 73 percent.
Another factor why many domestic workers remain unemployed is due to the working poverty, points out Aranxa Sánchez. Although there are more people working than before the pandemic, their income is not being sufficient given the high levels of inflation, which reached 7.3% last October.
Between the second and third quarters of 2021, the population that could not buy even a food basket went from 39.9 to 40.7%, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval). That is, more than 52 million people who generate money for a job cannot eat well, much less will be able to hire a domestic employee, says the economist.
The domestic workers They have been left without a job because other women absorbed, without remuneration, what they were doing, points out Aranxa Sánchez. That is, these tasks are only passed from one woman to another. But the workers are also women and many are mothers and they are suffering from what their employers do. Without a care system and before the closure of schools, they have had difficulties to work a double shift, the one they do at home and the one they did at someone else’s home.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx