These are fat cow times for remittance income in Mexico. The Central Bank reported this Monday that money transfers from Mexicans living and working abroad reached a new record in 2021, adding 50,484 million dollars, a value greater than the 49,206 million reached in the same period of 2020, the institution has highlighted. The first to celebrate the figures in green has been President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has said that they are an example of how well the Mexican economy is doing despite the blow given by the covid-19 pandemic. “They are numbers like never before. That is why our economy is recovering, it is growing ”, highlighted the president during his press conference this morning.
This high growth is financed by a significant increase in the wage bill of Mexican workers in the United States, explained remittance experts Jesús Cervantes, Denisse Jiménez and Cindy Sánchez, in a document in which they analyze the dynamism of migrant employment of Mexico in the power of the north. “This increase has been caused by a significant recovery in their employment levels accompanied by higher average wages,” the experts continue. They also add that the financial support granted by Joe Biden’s government during the pandemic benefits migrants, although many of them have not received them directly. “In 2021, the growth of Mexico’s income from remittances will be the highest recorded in 18 years,” they have affirmed.
The increase in employment during the pandemic has helped Mexicans in the United States send more money to their relatives in Mexico. The study shows that during the September-October two-month period of 2021 the employment level of Mexican migrant workers totaled more than seven million people. This advance, however, has been more significant among men, who found 4.7 million jobs, while women only added 2.3 million. This is explained “by a higher occupation of women in the service sectors, while in men there is a strong concentration of the construction industry, a sector that represented a significant rebound in occupations”, the experts have explained. In fact, construction has absorbed 31.4% of male workers, while 94% of jobs in household services have been held by women. In contrast, men have a reduced participation in sectors that require more specialization, such as health services, social assistance and education.
Mexicans in the United States prefer to make shipments through electronic transfers, which represents 99% of transactions, while those sent in cash only add up to 0.5%, barely 253 million dollars. In total, 11.6 million transactions have been made, with an average shipment of $ 401, according to the Central Bank report. In conclusion, experts Cervantes, Sánchez and Jiménez explained that remittances represented 3.9% of Mexico’s GDP in the first three months of last year. “During the first half of 2021, remittances reached 5.9 percentage points with respect to private consumption and significantly exceeded public investment,” they explained.
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