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By KELIN DILLON

On Friday, Dec. 1, Mexico’s National Minimum Wage Commission (Conasami) announced it will be raising the nation’s minimum wage to 248.93 pesos per day beginning Jan. 1, 2024, in line with Mexico’s inflation.

Mexico’s minimum wage previously sat at 88 pesos per day when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) first took office in 2018.

Underneath the López Obrador administration, Mexico’s minimum wage increased 16.2 percent in 2019, 20 percent in 2020, 15 percent in 2021, 22 percent in 2022 and 20 percent in 2023.

“I had six agreements for salary increases, and on five occasions, considering today, it was reached by consensus,” AMLO said during his daily morning press conference on Friday, Dec. 1. “Only in one year did the business sector not participate.”

While the new increase was below the 25 percent bump labor unions requested to Conasami, it’s significantly higher than the 12.8 percent increase proposed by the Employers’ Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex).

Now, with 2024’s increase implemented, López Obrador fulfilled his campaign promise of doubling the nation’s minimum wage by the end of his six-year term.