In 2024, contractual salaries had their best actual growth of the last two decades, according to the Department of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS). Increases in the remunerations of unionized personnel maintained a positive trend due to a decrease in inflation and high adjustments.
Last year, contractual salaries in the federal jurisdiction had a nominal increase of 7.0%, which meant an actual growth of 2.2%, the best percentage since 2001, when a 2.3 percent increase was reported.
With this result, unionized workers’ remunerations had two consecutive years of growth, after registering decreases in actual terms in 2021 and 2022, largely due to the inflationary context.
In the last year, in addition to inflation having a stable behavior, salary reviews in several months averaged adjustments of over 8%, reaching their best level in December, with a nominal increase of 10 percent.
For Blanya Correal, partner at TAMIM HR Consulting, contractual salary reviews are driven by increased union activity as a result of the labor reform of 2019, increases to the minimum wage and the high turnover and scarcity of specialized profiles in some industries.
“There is increasingly less talk about inflation in negotiations, and we hear more about how the minimum wage has reached the level of many companies’ pay scales, and unions are asking for the incorporation of the adjustments to the minimum wage in order to unflatten salary structures and, this is the reason why we even saw negotiations that reached two digits. The second reason relates to high turnover, given that the minimum wage is causing salary offers to be similar throughout all companies and, therefore, negotiations have sought to control turnover”, the specialist states.
According to the 2025 Salary Trends Survey by the Sistemas Humanos de México Firm, inflation is no longer the sole reference in the review of remunerations; companies also consider performance, competition for job profiles in the labor market and employee retention when negotiating increases.
Labor Reform of 2019: The first effects
Jorge Sales Boyoli, managing partner at the Sales Boyoli Firm, agrees that the significance that the minimum wage has had on wage scales and the new rules on collective bargaining that were established with the labor reform of 2019 are the factors that have had an influence on the reviews of contractual remunerations.
“These changes are relatively recent, and it must be taken into account that protection contracts ceased to exist in 2021. This means the democratic union life was born on that date. The fruits of collective bargaining in more favorable wage conditions for the workers will begin to be seen in 2025, and we do note that unions are more empowered to push for better reviews”, the specialist says.
Recent data, Sales Boyoli states, reflect a recovery of the purchasing power of contractual salaries, which experienced an actual loss in an adverse inflationary context.
For her part, Blanya Correal warns that the trend seen in the reviews can be hard to maintain, but pressure for maintaining adjustments well above inflation will continue to be applied. “This is why we are starting to see actual strike conflicts, because we are truly facing pressure from the unions.”
