Monday, October 27, 2008

Jobless

Javier Lozano, Mexico's labor secretary, said yesterday that Mexico will not be able to generate more than 300,000 new jobs until at least 2010. Most experts estimates that the nation needs at least 1 million per year to keep pace with the expanding labor force, although if you factor in migrants returning from a declining American job market, the figure is probably much higher.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great troubles just over the horizon, the Perfect Storm in Mexico. Massive reductions in federal income due to declining oil production and lower oil prices, food price increases world wide, returning immigrants, disappearing remittances. Then, how will all those returning folks react when they see things are worse than when they left, and have seen a better life in the US.?

In most cases, when they left, Mexico was a pretty pleasant place, tolerable crime that usually did not affect most families. Not at all the case now.

And AMLO's blatherings to stir things, "looking for tits on a snake", simply adds to the stress level. Not much different from the Populist language now in vogue in the US.

At the turn of the XX Century during the Revolution, wave upon wave of desperate Mexicans came North to escape violence, some quarter of the population. Will similar things be the case now?

pc said...

Yeah a lot of things are coming together at the same time, although it looks like the peso is stablizing and the banks remain safe. Even so, you have afores dropping by 20 percent, jobs disappearing, migrants returning...not a good time to be the "jobs president".