Abstract

GUTIERREZ RODRIGUEZ, Roberto. La recesión y la medición de la tasa de desempleo de México ante una eventual reforma laboral. Econ: teor. práct [online]. 2009, n.31, pp.43-72. ISSN 2448-7481.

The paper explores the external and internal inconsistencies of Mexico's labor force statistics and discusses the convenience of taking the February 2009 presidential proposition of reformulating the Federal Labor Law as an opportunity to encourage representatives of the productive sectors to review the underlying survey methodology as well as the historic consistency of labor force statistics and its appropriateness for policy-making. In this regard, particular attention is paid to the unemployment rate, whose absolute level and variations over time differ greatly from those observed by major Mexico's trading partners, grouped in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose statistic division and working groups have a great deal of experience in the standardization and processing of this kind of statistics. There are also considerable differences with Latin America and the Caribbean countries, despite the similarities in culture and development, and even greater with the members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), particularly the USA. By contrast, the analysis suggests putting a discreet distance from the International Labor Organization's methodology (ILO), whose flexibility leads to lack of precision and can affect the image of an emerging economy struggling to become one of the first of its class. It is convenient to bear in mind that in addition to labor force statistics weaknesses Mexico has not an unemployment insurance, while the other 30 OECD members, including Chile, the last country joining the organization (January 2010) have one in place.

Keywords : Labor reform; labor statistics; unemployment rate.

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