After two years of pandemic, the working market in Mexico it has been reconfigured with changes that have implied the incursion of people in other sectors of the economy. While women have found greater opportunities in the agricultural and industrial sectors, the men they have been used more in services; in both cases, activities with a tradition of working for the other gender.
According to data from the National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE) for the last quarter of 2021, the women’s work in activities related to agriculture and livestock it increased 15% in two years, while in industry it grew 4.0%, with a greater emphasis on the tasks of extractive areas and electricity, where the particular advance was 8.9 percent .
Meanwhile, the highest growth of the occupation for men it was concentrated in the tertiary sector, with an advance of 4.3%, with a strong rebound in activities such as professional, financial, corporate and social services, lines that registered an increase of up to 16.7% in male participation.
And although occupancy levels are already above what was reported before the pandemic, the labor participation rate overall it stands at 59.7%, still below the level reported for the end of 2019, of 60.5 percent.
In the case of men, participation in the labor market closed last year at 76.4%, 0.8 points below the comparison prior to the health emergency due to covid-19; the participation rate for women was reported at a level of 44.7%0.7 points less.
“In Mexico, the participation rate of women is lower than the world average (49%, ILO) and is even one of the lowest in Latin America, only behind Guyana, Guatemala and Suriname. The ENOE as of the fourth quarter of 2021 shows a gap of more than 30 percentage points in this indicator”, highlighted the organization México ¿Como Vamos? it’s a statement
Disproportionate employment impact
The economic impact of the pandemic It continues to affect women more. In the fourth quarter of 2021 there was a general unemployment rate of 3.7%, 0.3 points higher than what was observed at the end of 2019. This means that there are 217,985 more unemployed people than two years ago, 55% of said group are women .
In this way, the vacancy rate female closed the year at 3.8%, 0.4 points above the comparison with the data prior to the health emergency; the male was 3.6%, 0.2 point higher.
“We know that the situation of women It is worrying, they left their jobs in significant numbers during the crisis and for now they have not yet returned at the same level, a large number have not returned. That is an element of concern,” said Guy Ryder, director general of the International Labor Organization (ILO), in conversation with El Economista.
Meanwhile, the data published by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) show that in general 2021 closed with a little more than 1.2 million people in an occupation above that reported before the pandemic. Of every 10 additional jobs, seven have been for men and three for women. In addition, 55% of the vacancies focused on formality and 45% on informality.
When looking at the condition of jobs by gender, the behavior has also been different. While most of the male additional occupation has been in the informal sector, the female has concentrated in the formal labor market.
“It is estimated that the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the female employment will shrink worldwide in the coming years, but a sizeable gap is expected to remain. The disparity is most pronounced in upper-middle-income countries, where the employment rate for women in 2022 is projected to be 1.8 percentage points lower than in 2019, compared with a difference of only 1.6 percentage points for the men, even though women have a employment rate 16 percentage points below that of men”, warned the ILO.