How many people work for the Mexican drug cartels? Researchers have an answer

MEXICO CITY — Ovidio Guzmán López is currently in a Chicago lockup awaiting trial on drug-smuggling charges following his extradition last week.

His father, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, infamous founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is already serving a life sentence at a federal supermax prison in Colorado.

Back in Mexico, of course, organized crime continues to wreak havoc.

But how many people are on the payrolls of the Mexican cartels?

Now researchers have come up with an estimate: 175,000. That figure, which would make the cartels the country's fifth-largest employer, has steadily risen during the last decade, according