Days before the voracious businessman assumed the presidency of the United States for the second time, on January 13, 2025, President Sheinbaum, accompanied by her cabinet and members of the business sector, unveiled Plan Mexico, “a vision of the present and future of national development, comprised of 13 goals whose objective is to make our nation the best country in the world by reducing poverty and inequality, and which includes a portfolio of national and foreign investments totaling 277 billion dollars.”
“The objective,” she added, “is to continue making Mexico the best country in the world. Our country is a cultural powerhouse, and our objective is to reduce poverty and inequality, so that every Mexican knows that there is a plan, that there is development, that in the face of any uncertainty that may arise in the near future, Mexico has a plan and is united (…).”
A year after that announcement, there is not much to highlight, considering the facts. According to the most recent National Survey of Occupation and Employment, published regularly by INEGI (the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography), the difficulties that have long plagued the creation of good, well-paying jobs are confirmed: in December 2025, the percentage of the population employed was 59.1 percent, and the rate of informal employment was 54.6 percent, the survey indicates.
Furthermore, the services sector registered the largest number of employed Mexicans (26.6 million), representing 44.1 percent; followed by commerce (20.5 percent); manufacturing (15.7 percent); agriculture (10.6 percent); and construction (7.8 percent). And the data continues: comparing the recent figures with those from December 2024, the sectors with the greatest growth have been commerce, agriculture, and services, in contrast to the decline in manufacturing (238,000). (National Survey of Occupation and Employment, January 26, 2026).
If we agree that the deplorable employment figures are a clear reflection of our lack of growth, we would be wrong to continue settling (or resigning ourselves) to the 0.8 percent GDP growth – seasonally adjusted figures – reported on Friday. (El Economista, “Mexico’s Economy Grew 0.8% in the Fourth Quarter,” January 30, 2026).
Rather, we should begin by acknowledging all that this lack of growth implies and seek to address and understand its root causes. Among these, we must highlight the lack of investment – both public and private – necessary to transform our productive structure and its dynamics. We should also recognize that it is unacceptable for an economy of Mexico’s size and potential to continue relying on precarious employment rather than creating the decent jobs that its population demands.
This is not about mismanaging resources, much less about satisfying the ill-planned and even more poorly executed whims of the current administration, but rather about having comprehensive, deliberate, and well-written diagnoses. From these initial assessments, we would need to move on to planning exercises that address the multiple labor, social, educational, regional, productive, and environmental shortcomings that characterize us today.
In short, and in accordance with what the government and its Plan México have stated, it would involve deploying an explicit reordering of priorities and approaches to arrive at a renewed vision of development. This reformulation of public policy should, in turn, place fiscal policy at the center of the debate, as an essential starting point, with its three key tools: public revenue collection, spending, and financing—in pursuit of a fairer and better distribution of income.
The aim would be to provide the State with the minimum necessary instruments to set the entire economic apparatus in motion through a fiscal policy committed to an ambitious, progressive, and redistributive financial strategy. With decent employment and sound public finances, truly redistributive strategies could be established, consistent with the primary, yet always neglected, objective of providing us with a social state worthy of the name, a developmental state with a clear and precise historical direction in favor of the widespread protection of Mexicans and, more specifically, a welfare state increasingly prepared to fulfill its historical constitutional missions.
If what we want, as the head of the Executive Branch stated in January 2025 during the plan’s presentation, is to have a long-term vision for our country, we must avoid complacent views or biased diagnoses that, without exception and at great cost, have consequences.
Source: jornada
