History: Coneval highlights record figures in the reduction of working poverty

In an interview with Mario Maldonado for business diary of the media group El Heraldo, Jose Nabor Cruzexecutive secretary of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), said that in the first quarter of 2023, working poverty it has fallen to 37.7% of the population, while in the same period of 2022 it was 38.8%.

He explained that working poverty is the percentage of the population whose income from work is less than the monetary value of the food basket. In this regard, he pointed out that between the first quarter of 2013 and 2023, for the first time there are levels below 50 per cent of working poverty in rural areasbeing located in 49.6 percent of the population, while in the urban area the national average was 34 percent.

In terms of real labor income per person, increased by 7.3% on an annualized basis going from 2 thousand 850 pesos in the first quarter of 2022 to 3 thousand 58 pesos in the same period of this year. “This indicator has seen a very significant increase after the pandemic.”

He also highlighted the annualized growth of the food basket, as in the third quarter of 2022 it was around 14% in urban and rural food baskets, while inflation was close to 8%, but for In the first quarter this year, annualized growth has slowed down and already had an average behavior of 10.4% for the urban food basket and 10.2% in rural areas.

In this regard, he said that although it is falling, it is still above the average inflation value of 7.5% in the first quarter of this year, although in recent days the data corresponding to the first half of May of general inflation, in which it reached 6%.

“It seems to me that not only is it contained, but there seems to be a downward trend in inflation, also a drop in the price of food and that could translate into a further reduction in poverty for the workers for the second quarter of this year,” he elaborated.

Regarding labor income, he underlined a “strong increase in labor income per person from formal employment”, since it went from an average of 9 thousand 77 pesos in the fourth quarter of last year to 9 thousand 553 pesos in the first quarter of this year, this is an average increase of almost 500 pesos real income from work, however, added in the case of informal workers, there was a growth in their income of almost 200 pesos, from 4 thousand 519 to 4 thousand 790 pesos.

“We still have a gap almost double, that is to say a formal worker in our country earns almost twice as much as an informal workerthis continues to be one of the big challenges for our labor market in the short to medium term,” he said.