Employment falls in the first quarter of 2026

Mexico’s labor market experienced a setback in the first quarter of 2026: between January and March, the employed population decreased by 227,155 people, bringing the national total to 60.15 million employed individuals.

According to data from INEGI, formal employment fell by 230,119 in the first quarter of the year. Informal employment grew by 2,964 people during the quarter, the lowest job creation figure since the agency began recording data in 2005. As a result, the informality rate stood at 54.8%.

“This deterioration in the labor market at the end of the first quarter of 2026 confirms that Mexico remains trapped in a cycle of low efficiency as long as the trend toward informalization is not reversed. Under this scenario, the economy will continue to require increasingly costly capital investments to generate value; this leads to a slowdown in growth, as formal employment is more productive and generates a greater per capita contribution to GDP,” noted Gabriela Siller, director of economic and financial analysis at Banco Base.

The ENOE estimated that, cumulatively over the first three months of the year, the number of salaried employees fell by 397,535, while the number of employers decreased by 397,502.