Regional comovement in employment over the business cycle in Mexico

We determine the extent of cyclical comovement in employment among the regions of Mexico by analyzing the covariance of the disturbances in regional cycles during the period July 1997 - October 2009. Employment refers to the number of workers with permanent contracts affiliated to the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social. Trend and cycle decomposition and the variance-covariance matrix of the cycle's disturbances are obtained from the estimation -using state space methods- of a structural multivariate model of the employment time series. We find, for most regions, that employment comovement is high and that the variance of the regional cycles' disturbances is largely associated with the fluctuations in national employment. We do not find evidence, however, of a common underlying cycle, which means that employment comovement would arise from the geographical propagation of regional specific shocks.