Jobs for Mexicans

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/opinion/jobs-for-mexicans.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Nafta’s Promise Is Falling Short, Mexicans Agree” (front page, Jan. 5):

Despite the North American Free Trade Agreement, you write, “wages in Mexico have stagnated for more than a decade.” Why? It’s the balance between potential workers and jobs.

When those looking for jobs greatly exceed the jobs available, then there are always many who are desperate to work, even for subsistence wages. Employers need not pay more.

Although Mexico’s birthrates have fallen, it has a huge surplus of workers from its high birthrate in the recent past. Mexico is not alone. You reported (Business Day, Sept. 5, 2016):

“India has the fastest-growing large economy in the world, at an annual rate of 7.1 percent for the most recent quarter, but that is still far slower than the rate of a decade ago and not fast enough to create jobs for the more than one million people who enter the work force each month.”

In India, about 77 percent of the households had no regular wage earner or salaried worker. China, whose birthrate dropped in the 1970s, finally has enough jobs to balance its labor market. As the low birthrate continues, wages are beginning to rise.

Until the vast pool of Mexican unemployed and underemployed have jobs, competition for jobs will be intense and wages will not rise.

ROBERT WYMAN

Bethany, Conn.

The writer, a Yale professor, taught a course about the global problems of population growth.