Interesting to note is that this year emigrants have been sending more remittances of smaller amounts of money. This is attributed to the lowering of costs due to the use of electronic transfers (which now account for 85% of the total) and greater competition for the business.
EMPLOYMENT | Jobless rate reaches new height. The open unemployment rate in August reached 3.96%, overtaking the five-year record of 3.52% reported last month. In August last year the rate stood at 2.77%. As our readers know, these low figures reflect the highly restrictive definition of open unemployment in Mexico — still, the evolution of the rate is a clear illustration of the trend. The average open unemployment rate for last year was 2.71%; for 2001, 2.46%.
A better approximation to the true situation of Mexico's jobs market is provided by the rate of `critical occupation conditions', which takes into consideration jobs in the informal sector. This stood at 8.75% in August, up from 8.32% a year earlier.
TEQUILA | Less drunk at home, more abroad. In January-August this year only 11m litres of tequila were sold on the domestic market, down from 36m in the same period of last year. Exports, however, grew by 38%, to 69.5m litres between the same two periods. Overall, the tequila industry has been shrinking steadily since its peak in 1994: production in the first eight months of this year reached 83.5m litres, or 34% less than that of the same period four years ago.
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