Mexico added nearly 117,000 new formal sector jobs last month, but job creation on the year is still down 27%.
The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) reported that the number of people employed in new formal sector positions increased by 116,765 in September, a 28% increase over the same month a year ago. However, of the new jobs added last month, 50,412 — or 15% — were identified as temporary hires.
The total of new jobs created through the first nine months of 2025 has reached 333,303, well behind the 456,427 formal jobs created from January to September 2024. The newspaper El Economista reported that 16 states had negative figures for formal job creation last month.
“The new jobs data through September reflects the second-lowest figure for job creation since 2008, not counting the health emergencies of 2009 and 2020,” Fernando Bermúdez, director of Institutional Relations at the staffing firm ManpowerGroup, told El Economista.
The IMSS report indicated that overall formal employment is now just over 23.76 million, but that figure drops to 22,571,682 when people working in the digital economy are subtracted. And of this latter figure, 13% of the jobs are temporary positions.
Rodolfo Ostolaza, deputy director of Economic Studies at Banamex, told El Economista that subtracting the number of digital platform workers reveals that “employment has stagnated since mid-2024 … and [reflects] three consecutive months of annual declines.”
An additional concern is that the number of employers registered with IMSS has declined for 17 consecutive months. According to El Economista, IMSS reported 1,039,227 employer registrations with the Institute, a negative annual growth rate of 2.4%.
The loss of formal employers further strengthens the informal economy, which employs nearly 55% of the country’s workforce, according to the national statistics agency INEGI.
IMSS only records “formal” jobs, i.e., jobs registered with the Institute itself.
“Being formal is very expensive in this country,” Ostolaza said.
Still, because it includes both formal and informal jobs, INEGI’s most recent report shows a national unemployment rate of 2.7%, which is close to the historic low of 2.3% recorded in March 2024.
With reports from El Economista, Animal Político and El Financiero
