Employment and wages in Mexican micro, small and medium-scale mining at the beginning of the 21st century
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Abstract
Based on statistical data mainly from the Economic Census, this paper analyzes the transformations in micro, small and medium-scale mining resulting from the change of the Mexican economic model initiated at the end of the 20th century and characterized by the liberalization of the economy and the opening to the international market. For micro and small-scale mining this meant its expulsion from metal mining and its confinement to non-metal mining, with significant consequences on employment, outsourcing or wages, being excluded from the most profitable and fastest growing mining of the early 21st century. Meanwhile, medium-scale mining has been acquiring characteristics that increasingly bring it closer to large-scale mining: greater involvement in metal mining, and higher outsourcing, wages, assets and foreign investment.