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on information of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), last Wednesday The Universal published a discouraging note, which accounts for one of our great oversights: employment. “The personnel employed in the manufacturing industry reported an annual drop of 2.6 percent last September, linking two and a half years of decline since March 2023,” says the note by Rubén Migueles (“Manufacturing employment adds 2.5 years of decline”, The Universal11/19/25).
And he adds: “16 of the 21 activities that make up the sector reported an annual decline in September, highlighting the manufacturing of transportation equipment, with 7.6 percent. This branch concentrates the majority of workers, with 18 percent of the total (…) In addition, in 25 of the 32 states of the country there was a contraction in manufacturing employment. These entities participate with 96.5 percent of the total workers employed in activities that make up the sector.”
Bad numbers, terrible news that, without being, unfortunately, recent, do point to a truism: without economic growth there is no generation of formal employment, good and sufficient, to serve the millions of Mexicans who request it.
The challenge that employment poses (to us) is enormous, not only because it is a determining factor of the potential for economic growth, but because it constitutes the main source of income for Mexicans. In fact, it should be a present topic in and between parties, politicians, rulers, businessmen, academics, media, but it is not the case; Among us, given the overwhelming evidence, economic growth does not matter. And, apparently, neither does employment, which is almost mostly informal.
In a recent work session, José Casar illustrated the “sum” of our already prolonged economic deterioration: between 2000 and 2018, the economy showed a mediocre rate of 1.7 percent, although less unpresentable than that reported between 2018 and 2024, which was 0.8 percent.
Although, he told us, in the third quarter of 2022 the economy recovered its previous maximum level (third quarter of 2018), between that quarter and the third quarter of 2023 it barely grew 3.4 percent, but in the following four quarters it only advanced 1.5 percent.
Numbers that cease to be mere references when we notice that this militant effort to deny reality has meant not only that employment is stagnant and that real income per hour worked grows little, even with the fair increases recorded in the minimum wage, but that the (little) margin of action of fiscal policy has been exhausted and, reluctant as they have been to carry out a redistributive fiscal reform, they opt for a contraction (“blessed” austerity) of programmable spending, which to January-September 2025 was 6 percent lower than the same period (January-September) of 2024, according to the Public Finance and Public Debt report.
Recognizing that our economy has been prostrate for years is, must be, a starting point and from here we add voices and will to carry out a profound fiscal reform, provide the State with the necessary income to promote and finance development; boost economic growth and transform the productive structure, promote redistribution. Stimulating the creation of quality jobs and fair salaries must become a central objective of the development strategy.
We require, we must insist, to resume planning, to be able to formulate – and of course finance – infrastructure (communication roads, airports, sea ports); boost education and training for a rapidly changing world of knowledge and technologies; pay attention to the territory – prioritizing lagging areas – and sustainable development.
If we do not do so, the economy will continue to show discouraging signs that will continue leading us towards a perverse triangle: economic stagnation, deepening inequalities and growing criminal violence.
