A Precarious Labor Market Hurts Mexico's Youth Patricia Munoz Rios - La Jornada
go to original January 21, 2014

A total of 14.7 million young people between 14 and 19 years of age work in Mexico. Of those, 26 percent receive a minimum wage [about US$5 per day] or less as compensation, and 24 percent don't have a wage - they work for tips or piecework, occasionally, or in a family business. That is to say, half of them live on five dollars a day or less. Still, four out of ten work more than 48 hours per week, and only 13 percent of the total have social security.

So says a report titled "Job Insecurity as an Act of Violence against Minors" from the Employment Observatory at the Iberoamerican University of Puebla, written by researchers Ana Paola Aldrete González and Luis Ignacio Román Morales.

The document says that in 2013, the majority of young people suffered difficulties entering the job market: low wages, lack of benefits and social security, unemployment, exclusion and violence, "all elements which are a part of the mechanisms creating and sustaining poverty among young people, leaving them few weapons to face social reality."

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Rachel Alexander

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!