MORRIS THOMPSON
 Knight Ridder Newspapers

 MEXICO CITY -- Accountant Miguel Angel Motte Cervantes, 25, has been looking
 for work for two months. He quit his old job because it paid the equivalent of only
 about $545 a month. He has turned down several offers, he said, because
 employers wanted him to work for about $380 a month.

 So far, he has resisted doing what at least five friends from college did: going to
 the United States. Two are accountants in Chicago, one in Atlanta. Another
 works for Philip Morris, but Motte doesn't know where. Yet another is a graphics
 designer in California. Motte doesn't know what they get paid, but he's sure it's a
 lot more than he can make in Mexico -- even if he keeps selling clothes in street
 markets on the weekends on the side.

 ``Sometimes, people here actually make a lot more money working in an informal
 business, like selling something on the streets,'' Motte explained. ``Even waiters
 sometimes make more money than somebody with education like me.''

 President-elect Vicente Fox says that Mexico's employment problem isn't so
 much a lack of jobs as a lack of good-paying jobs. That's key in the ongoing
 Mexican migration to the United States, comparable in scope to the migration of
 Irish to the United States and Canada during the 19th Century.

 People at the top here economically, especially owners of large businesses, are
 still doing as well as their counterparts anywhere in the world, says economist
 and demographer Francisco Alba, a professor at the prestigious Colegio de
 Mexico.

 LEAVING FOR U.S.

 There's a growing but unquantified trend, he says, of professionals such as
 Motte's friends or people with trade skills such as plumbers, electricians and
 masons -- Mexican workers whose wages only a decade ago gave them
 internationally competitive buying power -- now going to the United States.

 UNEMPLOYMENT

 Meanwhile, as in much of the world, the gap between haves and have-nots is
 widening. A recent study found that 40 percent of Mexican households subsist on
 the equivalent of two minimum wages -- less than $220 a month.

 The official unemployment rate stands at 2.23 percent, the lowest in the 13 years
 the figures have been compiled. But Alba says that the definition of ``employed'' is
 overly broad. That's because it includes people such as chewing gum vendors
 who may work all day but earn next to nothing. The real rate of unemployment
 and underemployment, he estimates, is probably somewhere between 25 and 35
 percent.

 Many people do work that today barely exists in the United States, such as
 delivering orders of almost any size for tiny neighborhood businesses. Others do
 jobs no longer done by hand or perform them with antique, labor-intensive
 technology, especially in construction or agriculture, the sector that employs
 about one-fifth of the Mexican work force.

 The financial lot of agricultural day laborers is among the worst. An oversupply of
 workers pushes their wages below the official minimum, and they find work mainly
 during the planting and harvesting seasons.

 And millions work in the so-called informal economy, selling almost any
 manufactured or food product or service imaginable. As in much of the Third
 World, millions work long and hard every day to earn very little. At almost every
 stoplight on major streets here, at least a half-dozen vendors approach the cars
 selling something -- chewing gum, small batteries, candies, newspapers.

 $5.50 PER DAY

 Thursday was Elvia Becerra Rivera's first day on the job near this city's main
 plaza, the Zócalo, selling jester-style caps in the red, white and green of the
 Mexican flag. Independence Day is Sept. 15.

 Becerra, 42, hoped to earn, from the owner of a stand nearby, $5.50 to $6.50 that
 day. It's much more, she said, than the $2 to $3.25 she usually makes selling
 little wrapped candies on the streets.

 Like about 31 percent of Mexicans over age 15, Becerra has less than six years
 of schooling; she dropped out in the fourth grade and went to work. She has
 managed to keep her own children in school -- her daughter is 24 and a
 policewoman in the city of Puebla, she said, and her 17-year-old son is in high
 school here.

 ``It's hard going every day,'' she said.

 Along one side of Mexico's main Roman Catholic cathedral men come every day
 with signs that display their trades.

 Antonio Martinez, 32, spends three hours a day getting to and from the cathedral
 to offer his services as a mason and plumber.

 ``What I want is to work, maybe building a house or working on its interior,'' he
 said. ``I'd like my children to better themselves, to stick with their studies.

 ``We're waiting to see if Fox can help us,'' Martinez said. ``All the presidents go
 into office with promises, but none have ever come through.''