According to the Third Youth Opportunity Report, prepared by the YouthBuild Mexico association, up to 55% of young people aged 15 to 29 who are employed in Mexico work under precarious conditions, with very low wages that do not exceed nine thousand pesos per month and exhausting working hours of up to 10 or 12 hours a day. This means that about 7.6 million young people do not have an adequate salary to cover their basic needs.
The association reported that approximately 67% of labor sectors do not guarantee young people a sufficient income to acquire the basic necessary foods, estimated at around four thousand 510 pesos in urban areas and three thousand 256 pesos in rural areas. To cover these needs, young people require at least nine thousand 20 pesos in urban areas and six thousand 511 pesos in rural areas monthly, figures that exceed what many companies are willing to pay.
YouthBuild Mexico indicated that companies and businesses in the commercial sector are the lowest paid, with 80% of young people affected by insufficient wages, followed by agriculture, livestock, forestry, hunting, and fishing, where 79% of employees under 30 years old have precarious salaries. It was also mentioned that services in general, restaurants, and accommodation services, as well as social services, complete the list of the five sectors with the highest incidence of starvation wages, with 78%, 76%, and 73% respectively.
On the other hand, it is noted that the mining and electricity sectors are the ones that offer the best salaries to young people, with 69% of employees under 30 years old receiving more than nine thousand pesos monthly. It is essential to take into account that approximately 4 million young people work more than 48 hours a week, which represents 25% of the total employed young people and denotes the prevalence of labor precariousness in this segment of the population.
