Former Migrants To US Suffer Greater Unemployment After Returning To Mexico, Says Study

A new analysis from the Mexican government on future demographic changes in the country says that former migrants to the United States are at a disadvantage when looking for work upon their return to Mexico. While the rate of unemployment in Mexico was 4.9 percent in 2013, it stood at 19.7 percent for recently returned migrants -- a percentage, as Animal Politico notes, almost four times higher. And the situation has gotten worse: unemployment for that group was 17.6 percent in 2012.

In 2013, according to the analysis, about 11.8 million Mexicans were living in the United States, a number which accounts for 4 percent of the total population of the US and 28 percent of the immigrant population there (only Asian immigrants are more numerous). But their disadvantages in the labor market upon their return aren’t limited to higher rates of unemployment. Even when they get a job, they’re less likely to receive added benefits from their employers: 75 percent don’t get health care coverage from work, compared to 64 percent of the rest of the public.

The news comes shortly after Mexico’s biggest financial institution said the net flow of Mexicans into the United States, which slowed to zero following the financial crisis of 2009, was back on the rise in the first quarter of 2014. Their overall population in the US, the institution wrote in a report, grew 1.3 percent across the United States, though it continued to fall in some states which have long been hubs of Mexican migration.