Mexico is working hard to create jobs so that its people do not have to emigrate to find work and expects to add up to 1 million new jobs this year, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia said Thursday.
He said employment growth and ebbing population growth in Mexico should ease immigration into the United States, where hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated on May Day in response to moves to crack down on illegal immigrants.
“The most important solution is the generation of employment in our country,” Garcia told a news conference during the World Congress on Information Technology.
“We are working on that. This year by April 15 we had 306,000 new formal jobs generated. The expectation is at least 800,000, possibly 1 million new jobs this year in our country,” he said.
Garcia said the government had undertaken many new efforts to create jobs during the administration of President Vicente Fox, whose six-year term ends this fall.
“They are working intensely in the creation of jobs” by encouraging growth of small and medium-size businesses and improving education and infrastructure, Garcia said.
At the same time, he said Mexico’s population growth was slowing, he said. “The young population that Mexico has now is changing radically,” Garcia said. “So we are in the last years of strong pressure to generate employment.”