Drug Cartels Now Mexico’s 5th-Largest Employer

Some 175,000 people now actively work for Mexico’s smuggling cartels, according to a shocking estimate that would make cartels the country’s fifth-largest private employer.

Rafael Prieto-Curiel, who led the research, said the cartels’ secret is their viciously efficient recruitment ability. He said the cartels hire more than 350 people weekly.

That helps them counter massive losses through arrests, killings and dropouts.

“Cartels, they need to have roughly 175,000 members. They cannot be much smaller because they would have collapsed. They cannot be much bigger because they would have grown so fast,” Mr. Prieto-Curiel said. “So they have to be roughly 175,000 members, which means roughly, just to put it into context, the fifth-largest employer in the country.”

He and his fellow researchers used computer models to peer into the country’s notoriously secretive cartels. They ran millions of permutations on the 150 cartels and evaluated their recruiting and losses to arrests, killings and dropouts. (Read more from “Drug Cartels Now Mexico’s 5th-Largest Employer” HERE)