Export-industry employment stalls: 3.18 million IMMEX workers in May, INEGI reports
Headcount was flat versus April and down 1.5% from a year earlier, but the sector's real wages rose 5.8% in twelve months. Yucatán ranked among the states with the biggest drops in hours worked.
Employment at establishments in the IMMEX program — Mexico's export manufacturing, maquiladora and export-services industry — showed no change in May 2026 versus April, totaling 3,185,348 workers, a 1.5% decline from May 2025, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported July 22 in bulletin 430/26.
Hours worked fell 0.2% for the month and 1.4% for the year, in seasonally adjusted terms. By contrast, real average compensation — what directly hired staff earn, adjusted for inflation — rose 1.1% from April and is up 5.8% from a year earlier, according to the same report. In original figures, the sector's average monthly pay stood at 23,253 pesos per person, 3.5% higher than a year before.
Within the total, employment at manufacturing establishments fell 2.0% year-on-year, while non-manufacturing units — agriculture, fishing, commerce and services — grew 2.8%. In May, 6,520 establishments operated under the IMMEX program nationwide, with combined revenues of 693.9 billion pesos, 59.7% of it from foreign markets.
The peninsula angle
The report notes that, year-on-year, hours worked increased in Mexico City, Veracruz, Jalisco and Nuevo León, while the steepest declines came in Yucatán, Durango and Chihuahua. IMMEX employment is concentrated in the north — Nuevo León, Chihuahua and Baja California hold more than a third of the total — and Quintana Roo barely participates in the program: its economy runs on services, not maquila plants.
Why it matters in Cancún
The IMMEX statistic is one of the country's gauges of formal export employment and a real-world read on USMCA trade. When export manufacturing weakens, it usually reflects softer external demand and corporate caution — factors that eventually weigh on national consumption and, with it, on the domestic tourism that visits the Mexican Caribbean. June figures will be published August 20, 2026, and the full data tables are available free at inegi.org.mx.
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