Mexico's formal employment shed 19,550 positions in July 2026, the largest drop for any July in the records of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), which date back to 1998. The report, published on August 10, puts cumulative job creation at 243,078 positions in the first seven months of the year, according to Expansión.
The IMSS attributed the decline to the seasonality of the end of the school year and the downward phase of the agricultural cycle, in a July that also followed the close of the 2026 World Cup. Bloomberg Línea places it as the worst formal employment loss for a single month in the institute's records, surpassing the Julys of 2020, the pandemic year, and 2005. Over the past 12 months, formal employment added 326,987 positions, a 1.5% annual gain. The slowdown is not uniform: Baja California, a border state with manufacturing tied to U.S. demand, continues to expand its insured workforce, while entities dependent on seasonal sectors such as Campeche are contracting.
Baja California led annual formal employment growth at 7%, followed by Oaxaca at 5.8%, while Campeche recorded the country's steepest decline at 7.3%. By sector, transport and communications grew 7.5% over the year and the extractive industry 4.3%, while manufacturing contracted 0.7% and agriculture fell 5.6%. Digital platform workers cushioned the national figure: traditional employment lost 29,823 positions and platforms added 10,273, leaving the net decline at 19,550. As of July 30, the IMSS counted 22,760,154 insured positions. Alberto Alesi, ManpowerGroup's director for Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, stated in an analytical note: "We are seeing very high caution around hiring."
ManpowerGroup projects that 2026 will close with between 150,000 and 250,000 formal jobs created, and that personnel demand will moderate in the third quarter, when just 45% of employers plan to hire. The IMSS report leaves, for now, three months with net losses in 2026: January, May, and July.
This article was written with artificial intelligence assistance based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.