10 years of PAN governments: INEGI figures offer damning indictments

The graph to the left, courtesy of Milenio,  shows the rise in informal employment in the first four years of the sexenio of Mexico's "President of Employment," as Felipe Calderón's 2006 campaign slogan went: In short, up from 11.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, to 12.85 million in the third quarter of 2010. The figures are from Mexico's national statistics institute, INEGI, although other organziations such as Centro de Estudios Económicos del Sector Privado (CEESP) argue that the real figure is far higher, given INEGI's restrictive definition of informal unemployment: According to CEESP, the real figure might be as high as 28 million, or upwards of 64 percent of Mexico's population.

On their face value, I find CEESP's numbers to appear too high, yet the main point from INEGI's figures is clear: Calderón has presided over a big jump in the number of people working in the informal sector, following a trend by President Vicente Fox (up 1.73 million) before him.

Regarding actual unemployment, in a La Jornada article along the same lines, calculations indicate that unemployment quadrupled in the 10 years of PAN rule: 2.6 million with no unemployment, and a further 5.4 million who, in INEGI's categorization, have "desisted" or basically given up on seeking formal work.
Those underemployed, according again to INEGI, rose from 3 million to 3.7 million.

The moniker "Presidente del Empleo" has long since turned into a joke. Following INEGI's statistics, it appears an increasingly cruel one.