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Comment by randomsofr | Hacker News Reader

The minimum wage in Mexico is only used as a unit to pay fines, no one earns that, you simply can't live with that kind of money. Even $200 per month is low for a engineer. A Junior Engineer's salary is around $500-$1k per month.

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~13% of the fraction of the country that is formally employed earns minimum wage[1]... just not usually people in any sort of specialized profession working in cities.

[1] (in Spanish) http://www.milenio.com/politica/salario_minimo-aumento_salar...

13% are reported earning minimum wage. This is a known way for employers to avoid paying more taxes, seguro social, etc. Then they get all other part of their salary marked as 'bonus'

I don't see any reason to think that there aren't a number of laborers being paid the minimum wage in Mexico, or else why would anyone go to the trouble and risk of illegally crossing the US border to take sub-minimum wage work?

The very large population earning $30-$50 a week work for companies or individuals who will never report that salary in order to avoid paying taxes on it. This means any statistics related to this issue are going to be hard to trust namely, the situation looks better than it is and thus why so many desperately want to cross the border. It's not like Mexican companies don't make money, they make tons of it. They just don't share or invest it.

I don't find it unlikely that that is happening, but I find the claims here that absolutely no one in Mexico is paid the minimum wage hard to believe.

I was agreeing with you :)

That's what I get for not reading carefully.

At least no one working on a stable company, im sure theres people working on the fields that earn the minimum. I live in Mexico and i don't know a single person that earns the minimum salary. Even people doing interships earn more than the that.

Oh there are. But we can not say if all the 13% reported earn minimum wage or not. I'm not saying there isn't. There just isn't 13% that's for sure. Even if it is at 12.9% we just really can't know.

But by the same token, people are going to drift in and out of minimum-wage work, either through unemployment or better employment. It's not like it's the same fixed 13% of the population we're talking about. So it could well be a greater proportion of workers who at one point or another have worked for minimum wage.

Sure, but then you are also missing all the people who make below minimum wage because they are not formally employed. Which is a large number of people in Mexico. For example, the salaries of domestic workers are hardly ever reported (the average is around 2 minimum wages, but it is unclear what the lower bound is and is not like they work only 40 hours in practice, see: [1]), and the earnings of street food vendors probably vary a lot (it might often be above minimum, but in plenty of cases it could also be below).

[1] http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/02/05/sociedad/039n1soc

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