A decline in investment and businesses has marked the Mexican economy in the last year.

Andrés Gallegos

The year 2025 confirmed that Mexico has a fragile economy, held together by a thread. It has experienced 14 consecutive months of declines in gross fixed investment, two years with fewer employer registrations at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), and low economic growth.

This is revealed in the first 2026 edition of the Economic Analysis Bulletin of the ITESO Business School, a publication that celebrates its first year of disseminating and explaining the most relevant national and state economic information.

"Gross fixed investment drives forward growth, and if it's falling, it's holding back future economic growth and the economy in general," says Mireya Pasillas, an academic at ITESO and editor of the newsletter. "And the business sector has deteriorated in a way that, along with investment, is hindering growth and employment."

The country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) registered an annual growth of 0.41 percent in the third quarter of 2025. This percentage is lower than the 1 percent that accumulated on average during the five-year period 2019-2024 and the 1.99 percent of the period 2013-2018, which confirms the slowdown of the Mexican economy.

Gross fixed investment, which measures an economy's productive capacity through spending on construction and the purchase of machinery and equipment for the construction sector, registered negative rates for 14 consecutive months. The latest figure (October of last year) shows a year-on-year reduction of 3.38 percent.

Regarding the creation of formal businesses, the IMSS registered a loss of 25,667 employers during 2025, which adds to the 17,911 formal businesses lost in 2024. This marks 18 consecutive months of reduction in companies contributing to the IMSS, mostly micro and small establishments.

In 2025, the creation of formal jobs increased slightly compared to the previous year: 278,697 versus 213,993. However, Pasillas points out that this increase is "fictitious" due to the obligation of digital platforms like Uber and DiDi to register their delivery drivers, chauffeurs, and other workers. Without these registrations, the number of new jobs created would be 72,176, meaning more than 200,000 fewer positions.

"It's positive that these workers have access to the IMSS, but these aren't new jobs, they already existed," points out the editor of the Economic Analysis Bulletin .

Informality has become established as a mechanism to absorb the workforce due to the economy's inability to generate enough formal jobs: 55.4 percent of the employed population in Mexico works without benefits or social security.

A positive indicator for the national economy is inflation, which remained at 3.69 percent in 2025, within the Bank of Mexico's target range. Furthermore, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) showed a 14.5 percent year-on-year increase compared to the third quarter of the previous year, although this sector remains uncertain due to pressure from the United States ahead of the renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada (USMCA).

Low expectations for 2026

The Economic Analysis Bulletin predicts that 2026 will be a year of "low growth, persistent inflationary pressures and high levels of uncertainty, both external and internal," which maintains the trend of economic slowdown shown in 2025.

The analysis forecasts that economic growth for 2025 (pending fourth quarter data) will be between 0.3 and 0.6 percent, while the projection for 2026 will be between 0.7 percent and 1.1 percent.

National annual inflation for 2026 will be higher (4.1 percent) as a result of adjustments to the tax code, tariffs on products from countries without a trade agreement with Mexico, or the increase in the minimum wage.

This year there will be a reduction in the generation of formal jobs, estimated at 221,305, 55,000 fewer jobs than those generated in 2025.

Pasillas considers at least three factors that will affect the national economy this year: the slowdown in private investment generated by uncertainty about the effects of the judicial reform, the discussion of the next electoral reform and the renegotiation of the USMCA scheduled for July 2026, with dark clouds on the horizon due to pressure from the US government headed by Donald Trump.

"With the geopolitical changes and the threat from the United States to intervene against organized crime groups in national territory, what they are seeking is to make the negotiation more expensive and for Mexico to accept all the conditions they impose, which will be stricter, generating higher regulatory, commercial and compliance costs for certain sectors of the national economy," the academic predicts.

Jalisco: Exports are growing, but jobs and investments are declining.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) on Exports by Federal Entity, Jalisco registered an annual increase of 52.3 percent in its accumulated exports to the third quarter of 2025, with an amount of 32 billion 546 million dollars, the largest increase registered in this indicator.

However, the state's labor market is weak, generating only 27,794 formal jobs in 2025, the lowest figure in more than a decade, not counting 2020, the year in which 32,000 jobs were lost due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The state also registered a contraction in FDI, falling 22.3 percent annually to the third quarter of 2025. In the first nine months of last year, Jalisco registered 902.2 million dollars in FDI, of which 695.5 million are reinvestments of profits from companies already consolidated in the state.

Finally, the Quarterly Indicator of State Economic Activity (ITAEE) reveals a low dynamism of production in the state: it barely grew 0.8 percent annually in the first quarter of 2025, ranking 20th out of 32 states.

First anniversary

With this edition, the ITESO Business School's Economic Analysis Bulletin celebrates its first year of publication as a reference document for the dissemination of economic information within academia, but especially outside of it, since the analysis it offers is taken up by other media and important sources of information on economic matters.

"The newsletter has been very well received; we already have many subscribers and significant media coverage. It's seen as a valuable resource for disseminating economic information and has been picked up by many state (not just Jalisco) and national media outlets," says Pasillas.

The most recent issue of the newsletter can be found at https://ite.so/boleconomi25 .