Mexico’s Social Security Institute (IMSS) reported that 278,697 formal jobs were created last year, a second consecutive year in which job creation failed to top 300,000.

The performance was especially disappointing for President Claudia Sheinbaum, as it was the lowest formal employment figure in a president’s first full year in office since Vicente Fox in 2001. Sheinbaum took office in October 2024.

Although Mexico’s economy typically slows down in the first years of a new administration, Bloomberg News reported that “the weakness of growth was accentuated by a marked contraction of private investment, a cut in public spending to reduce an unprecedented fiscal deficit and the uncertainty due to Donald Trump’s tariffs.”

The IMSS report, published on Jan. 8, showed that formal job creation was the second-lowest observed in the past 15 years, not counting 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The poorest performance occurred in 2024 when only 213,933 formal jobs were created.

It’s worth noting that formal job creation exceeded the central bank forecast which projected the generation of between 60,000 and 160,000 jobs for all of 2025. It also exceeded the 180,000 jobs estimated by the Mexican Institute of Finance Executives Expectations Survey.

On the other hand, between 2010 and 2019, annual formal job creation consistently exceeded 600,000 positions, even topping 800,000 in 2017.

The main engine in creating jobs in 2025 corresponded to workers linked to digital platforms, which accounted for nearly three out of every four jobs created (74.1%).

The employment situation reflects a lack of dynamism in the economy and the inability of the productive apparatus to generate formal jobs outside of digital schemes, economists say.

“If platform workers are excluded, job growth for the year was 0.3%, lower than the expected 0.5%,” Rodolfo Ostolaza, deputy director of Economic Studies at Banamex, said.

The creation of only 72,176 jobs outside of the digital sector reveals underlying stagnation, Ostaloza said.

The weight of platform employment during 2025 occurred in the context of a July-to-December pilot program for incorporation into social security for delivery drivers and app drivers which allowed them to be registered within the IMSS.

“Without this component, the labor market would have shown a significantly weaker performance, both in terms of job creation and social security affiliation,” he said. 

Even so, only 13% of the workers within the pilot test met the threshold to be considered fully insured.

At the same time, job losses in December reached 320,692 jobs, in line with the seasonal adjustment observed recurrently at the end of each year.

The monthly layoffs were lower than that recorded in December 2024 (405,259), but it was the second largest of the last decade in proportional terms, representing 53.5% of the jobs that had been generated up to November.

Of the nine sectors into which the IMSS divides the economy for the purpose of employment registration, five grew in 2025; however, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and extractive industries all lost jobs.

The sectors with the highest annual percentage growth in jobs were transportation and communications (13.7%, due primarily to railway construction), commerce (3.1%), electricity (2.1%) and services (1.6%).

With reports from Bloomberg Online and El Economista