
Maurizio, R., Monsalvo, A., Catania, S., Martínez, S. (2023) Changes in the structure of employment and the discussion on occupational polarization in Latin America the cases of Argentina, Chile and Mexico
This article examines the changes in the structure of employment and income in three Latin
American countries -Argentina, Chile and Mexico- during different subperiods over the first
two decades of the new millennium. It applies the “jobs approach”, which combines
occupation type and branch of activity. The study is carried out for all workers and also for
different subgroups defined on the basis of gender, age, educational level and formality
status. The results show a wide variation of structural change patterns between periods and
countries. In Argentina, an inverted U-shaped pattern is found in employment growth for the
period 2003–12, while a certain polarizing trend is observed between 2012 and 2019. In Chile,
no clear pattern is identified between 2000 and 2009, and a certain pattern of upgrading is
found from 2009 until 2017. In Mexico, there is no evidence of significant changes between
2006 and 2010, while an inverted U-shaped pattern is found in the following decade. In the
three countries, when the nearly two decades under analysis are considered as a whole, a
reallocation of jobs from the lower end of the distribution to jobs in the middle and upper part
of the distribution can be observed. Lastly, mean wages behaved differently from what was
observed in jobs, as lower-income occupations experienced greater increases during the
period studied.