Mexico's Youth Face Growing Exclusion From Work, School

Mexico faces a structural youth exclusion problem, with 14.9 million people aged 15-29 excluded from education, employment, or trapped in labor precariousness as of August 2026, a population that has narrowed by only 1.5 million over four years. Informality affects 60% of employed youth and 55% of Mexico's overall workforce, while entry-level job growth has slowed from 9% to 3% annually since 2021 amid AI-driven changes to junior hiring.  

Nearly 14.9 million Mexicans between 15 and 29 years old are excluded from education, trapped in labor precariousness, living in poverty, or held back by an educational lag of 12 years or less of schooling, according to a diagnosis by the Youth with Decent Work Alliance to mark International Youth Day. Over the past four years, that population shrank by only 1.5 million, a pace that would take Mexico close to 40 years, nearly two generations, to close the gap.

The figures point to a structural problem that job creation alone has not solved. Of the 15.4 million young Mexicans who hold a job, 60% work informally, equivalent to roughly 9.2 million people, and 61% lack access to social security. The share of young informal workers has barely moved in two decades: the Work Forecast report, produced by Citizen Action Front Against Poverty and the Alliance using data from Mexico's National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE), found around 9 million informal young workers in 2005 and 9.2 million in 2025.

The stagnation reflects a labor market that continues to favor informal hiring across all age groups, not only youth. Mexico's informality rate reached 55% of the 33 million occupied workforce in June, and self-employed informal workers earned MX$75.7 (US$4.38) per hour, more than the MX$66.3 (US$3.83) earned by salaried formal employees, according to the private-sector think tank CEESP. The organization frames the wage gap as a symptom of a broader structural problem, noting that with formal job creation stalled, informal work has become not just a fallback option but, in many cases, the more lucrative one. 

Educational exclusion compounds the labor gap, and household income remains the strongest predictor of who continues studying. Among those 15 to 17 years old, 95% from higher-income households remain in school, compared with 59% from lower-income households, the Alliance reports. The gap widens in higher education: 69% of 18 to 20 year olds from wealthier households study, against 24% from poorer ones. More than half of young Mexicans, 51%, have not completed upper secondary education, a rupture point the Alliance identifies as one of the main breaks in youth educational and labor trajectories.

Unpaid care work removes millions more young people from both school and the labor market, with a disproportionate effect on women. The number of youth excluded from school or work due to care responsibilities at 3.3 million, following an earlier estimate of 3.8 million for 2025, of which 3.5 million were women. These figures reflect exclusion rather than a lack of interest or capability among young people.

The pressure on youth employment extends to those who already hold jobs. Employment among 15 to 24 year olds fell from 9.1 million to 8.7 million in 2025, a loss of 476,000 positions year over year, and 67.3% of employed youth in that age group worked informally. That trend aligns with separate findings from the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, IMCO, which found that entry-level job growth in Mexico slowed from 9% to 3% annually between 2021 and 2026, a trend the institute links to broader shifts in how companies structure junior roles as AI adoption expands, alongside economic and sectoral factors. IMCO warns that a sustained reduction in entry-level roles raises the barrier for job seekers without prior experience and pressures companies and schools to rethink how practical training is delivered.

Young workers described low wages, temporary contracts, and extended workdays as recurring conditions in the jobs available to them. The Alliance is proposing that employers relax experience requirements for entry-level roles, recognize skills acquired outside formal education, and expand access to benefits for young workers, measures it frames as necessary to prevent another generation from being locked out of both classrooms and formal payrolls. For companies operating in Mexico, the data suggest that recruitment and workforce-development strategies built around traditional entry-level pipelines will need to account for a shrinking pool of young candidates able to access those roles through conventional paths.