Youth Unemployment and Urban Labor Markets: Another Step towards Social Exclusion in Mexico.

Ornella Ortiz , El Colegio de Mexico

More than half of the Mexican labor force participates in the informal sector. The lack of work contract allows flow of workers in the labor markets. This is evidenced by the low unemployment rates in the country. According to institutional context, which is classified as familistic regime, there is no national unemployment insurance social program, and therefore jobless individuals rely on their families for supporting their situation and offsetting social exclusion effects. The objective is to explore the heterogeneity of youth unemployment in terms of sociodemogaphic background, previous working conditions and characteristics of different labor markets and analyze how these features shape the unemployment situation. The data, for the first quarter of 2018, come from the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE) and the methodological strategy is quantitative. To describe how youth people face labor market, participation and unemployment rates are calculated. Moreover, labor conditions of their last employment are examined through frequencies and estimation of income’s mean. The exploratory phase consists of an index -using principal component analysis- that ranks urban labor markets. Logistic regression models technique is added to analyze how labor variables and individual features affect the probability to be unemployed. The results indicate that youth people face the highest unemployment rates. Concerning last employment, in contrast to adults, access to benefits was more constrained and income was lower. Urban labor markets located in the north of Mexico offer better labor conditions. These factors were more important to explain youth unemployment than individual features.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy