Formal employment in Mexico in 2025 performs worst in five years

In 2025, formal job creation had its worst performance since 2020, registering only 72,176 jobs, without considering the pilot program for platform workers.

In 2020, there was a loss of 647,710 jobs due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to figures from the Base financial group based on information from the IMSS.

Taking into account the pilot program that incorporates app workers, formal employment in 2025 was 278,697 jobs, an increase of 30% compared to 2024.

The IMSS reported earlier on Thursday that 320,692 jobs were lost in December, but Base pointed out that job losses are normally seen in the last month of the year due to the year-end closure, so the contraction was expected.

In terms of employer registrations, the IMSS reported a total of 1,029,280 in December, a decrease of 6,839 employers compared to the previous month.

Base stated in a report that the total number of employers has decreased monthly in 19 of the last 20 months.

Compared to December 2024, in the last month of last year, there was a drop of 25,667 employers, a contraction of 2.43%, adding up to 18 consecutive months of annual declines, something that had not occurred since the period between April 2003 and September 2005, when employer registration fell for 30 consecutive months.