By Carlos A. Flores Vargas

General Manager of Corazón Capital and
Professor at the Monterrey Institute of Technology

“A midlife crisis grips young people at a stage that should be full of enthusiasm. They are more aware of their mental health, social media generates depression and anxiety, and they have worse future prospects than their parents, with an economic situation that makes it increasingly difficult to consolidate a life project,” Daniel Soufi wrote a few days ago in The Country, regarding the findings in a study published in the American scientific journal PLOS OneIn Mexico, the situation is no different. Young people in Mexico face a future where their hopes are fading.

In that context, organizations like Capital Heart, Global Opportunity Youth Network Mexico City (GOYN)(for its acronym in English) and Youthbuild Mexico published the document What is happening with youth and work in Mexico City? with the purpose of answering that question.

According to this research, Mexico City has 2.02 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29, representing 22.1% of the city's population. Of this group, 259,000 are neither studying nor working; 25.1% have completed secondary school at most, 40.1% have completed upper secondary education, and only 35.1% have higher education. Iztapalapa has the highest percentage of young people at 19.8%, while Milpa Alta has the lowest at just 1.8%.

In the capital, 1 million young people work, meaning 5 out of every 10 young people. Of these, 508,000 work in the informal sector and 496,000 in the formal sector. A relevant statistic: in Milpa Alta, 511 young people work in the informal sector, compared to 361 in Iztapalapa, 351 in Xochimilco, and 341 in Cuauhtémoc. On the other hand, 1 million young people are not working. Of these, 762,000 are students, 233,000 are unemployed, and 116,000 are unavailable for work and perform unpaid domestic care (751 of whom are women).

The study concludes that young people's access to decent work is marked by a series of structural gaps that limit their opportunities for economic and social development. These gaps manifest themselves in three areas: job insecurity, educational disadvantage, and gender inequality. It highlights that 44.1% of young people earn up to one minimum wage, 28.1% earn more than one and up to two minimum wages, and only 11% earn more than five minimum wages.

The findings clearly show that the demographic dividend for the capital is at risk, since having a large young population does not guarantee inclusion or social mobility without access to decent educational and employment opportunities. They also demonstrate that job insecurity has become the norm for most young people, that education remains the primary barrier to inclusion, and that structural gaps persist, including gender inequality and the lack of care services, which disproportionately affect young women.

Although young people aspire to improve their living conditions, most adjust their expectations based on practical realism; that is, they consciously recognize "their limitations, but also their real possibilities." Their goals are usually organized around immediacy and day-to-day life. There is no encouraging future. Dropping out of school is not experienced as a failure, but as a turning point in their trajectory that has allowed them to learn new skills, work, or even start a family. And to top off this bleak outlook, in the workplace, most young people adopt a pragmatic approach and are willing to "take whatever comes their way" as long as they earn an income. The distinction between formal and informal work is not central; "what matters is immediacy and the possibility of meeting basic needs."

While technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic changes and the green transition are rapidly transforming the global labor market, this is the panorama of young people in Mexico City: broken dreams.