Mexico minimum wage MIR reduction proposal, Digi Mart USA News (Mexico): The Monto Independiente de Recuperación (MIR), a mechanism designed in 2016 as a fixed amount in pesos to recover workers’ purchasing power, has lost effectiveness in containing the impact of minimum wage increases on contract negotiations, according to conclusions from the Advisory Committee of the National Minimum Wage Commission (Conasami), as reported by El Economista.
A study by the Bank of Mexico, included in the official document, states that during 2026 wage negotiations used the total announced increase as a reference, without distinguishing between the fixed and percentage components. The effect reached workers earning up to 1.7 minimum wages, a segment that accounts for 75% of formal employees.
The Labor and Social Welfare Secretariat found that the percentage component has an effect on collective wage reviews eight to ten times greater than the fixed amount. According to its estimates, if the 2025 increase had been applied exclusively as a percentage, contractual increases would have reached 10.22%, compared with the 7.16% recorded.
In light of these results, the department recommended gradually reducing the share of the MIR until annual increases are determined entirely by percentages. The diagnosis also documents changes in wage distribution.
Social Security figures show that 48.5% of registered workers earn between one and 1.4 minimum wages, while in 2016 that same range included only 18.3%.
Conasami president Luis Munguía Corella told El Economista that the future of the MIR will be one of the main issues during negotiations over the 2027 wage increase. Unions are asking to eliminate the mechanism entirely so they can negotiate higher percentage increases in their collective contracts with companies.
Business representatives, by contrast, seek to keep it to contain pressures arising from wage reviews.
The Conasami Council of Representatives will open its permanent session during the week of November 23 to 27, when deliberations on the next wage adjustment will begin. The commission will analyze changes to the wage mechanism in response to differences across the country.
The report also found that the average gap between professional minimum wages and the general minimum wage fell from 42.7% to 14% between 2017 and 2026. It attributes this reduction to the failure to apply the recovery component to professional occupations.
