The numbers that the IMSS cannot disguise
The Mexican Social Security Institute has just released its figures for the first quarter of 2026. And the photo is not pretty. More than 1.1 million affiliated jobs were lost between December and March.
The specific figure? From 23.9 million we went down to 22.7 million. A dry blow to the formal economy.
The black hole: digital platforms
Here is the detail that hurts. The fall is concentrated, brutally, in digital platform workers. At the end of last year we had more than 1.26 million registered in this sector.
By March of this year, the figure plummeted to just 155,520. Yes, you read that right. A loss of more than a million affiliated jobs in just three months.
Where were all those delivery people, drivers and digital collaborators? The report does not say so. It only records its disappearance from the formal radar.
The annual consolation and the fine print
As a good official organization, the IMSS looks for the positive angle: “In annual comparison there is still growth.” Comparing March 2025 with March 2026, there are 259,570 more jobs.
But that annual statistic slips like water through your fingers when you have a million-dollar quarterly collapse in front of you.
What does grow are the affiliated independent workers: 415,717 people. A modality that is promoted as an “alternative” to the traditional system.
Translation: more and more people have to make a living on their own, while stable employment evaporates. The figures speak clearly, even when they try to tell them in another way.
