Mexico - Unemployment Rate

For Mexico, the National Survey of Employment and Occupation (ENOE) is the main source of information on the labor market; it provides monthly and quarterly data on the labor force, employment, labor informality, underemployment, and unemployment. Data Buffet extracts two rates (unemployment rate, participation rate), by sex (male, female, total), in two variants (NSA, SA).

Active:

• Measurement: Percent share (%)
• Smoothing: 3-month moving average (3-mo MA)
• Adjustments:
  • Seasonally adjusted (SA)
  • Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Monthly
• Start date: Uniformly 2005m1
• Geo coverage: Country

Predecessors:

• Working age 14 years and over - 2000m4 to 2014m9 ("_14")
• ENEU - 1985m1 to 2003m6 ("04")

Global concept alias(es):

• LBR
• LBPR

ENOE applies to members of the household of a home selected by the sampling techniques of a stratified cluster. The unit is the latest selection of private homes and a unit of observation to the people.

The sampling method ensures that, as each home has a probability of selection, all residents are properly represented in the computation of the employment situation. The expansion factors are corrected by the percentage of inhabited houses from the selected sample. The projection of population has been agreed upon by a collegial panel that contains expert demographers from the National Population Council, the College of Mexico, and INEGI. The survey delivers results on the national level and 32 urban sectors for each quarter. The national level is disaggregated into four domains. The first domain contains 100 locations and over 100,000 people, the second domain ranges from 15,000 to 99,999 inhabitants, the third domain includes 2,500 to 14,999 citizens, and the final domain has less than 2,500 people. The ENOE follows the criteria laid out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) within the limits of the International Labor Organization (ILO). This criteria clarifies the definitions of employed vs unemployed. The survey is designed to clearly identify the concepts of unemployment, employment, and underemployment.

During the early months of the COVID pandemic, the field operations of ENOE were suspended (April 2020 to July 2020) and the program was temporarily replaced by a telephone survey, ETOE. Subsequently, the program resumed using a mix of in-person and telephone interviews, and was dubbed ENOE New Edition (ENOE^N).

Moody's Analytics supplements

For the "04" vintage, we constructed seasonally adjusted supplements where useful.

For the "_14" and active vintages, we back-extended history using predecessors. These series carry a secondary source citation of "Moody's Analytics Estimated."

The timetable for dissemination of INEGI, available at its website, indicated the date will be provided the information for one month of lifting and what other information of a quarter, and more abundant detail. 

Further reading

At the source:

• Encuesta Nacional de Empleo Urbano (ENEU)
• ENOE, population aged 14 and over (superseded by aged 15 and over)
• ENOE, population aged 15 and over
• Encuesta Telefónica de Ocupación y Empleo (ETOE)
• ENOE Nueva Edición (ENOE^N)

At IMF (SDDS):

• Labor market: Employment (Jan 2025)

• Sep 2005 - Initial version.
• Mar 2015 - INEGI redefines working age from "14 and over" to "15 and over".
• Feb 2025, Phillip Thorne - Properties, Moody's Analytics supplements, Further reading.