For every 100 pesos of output Mexico's export manufacturing produced in 2024, about 44 stayed in Mexico, as wages, profits, and inputs bought from Mexican suppliers. The other 56 paid for imported parts and materials. That is INEGI's measure, and 44.2% is the highest share it has recorded.
Domestic export value added in Mexico's global manufacturing
Domestic export value added as a share of global manufacturing output, percent, 2013 to 2024 (2024 preliminary)
What INEGI measures
Every year INEGI publishes an account called the valor agregado de exportación de la manufactura global: the domestic value added of global manufacturing. "Global manufacturing" is INEGI's term for the part of Mexican manufacturing tied to production for foreign markets, the plants that import inputs, transform them, and ship the result abroad.
The account splits the value of that output into its parts. In 2024, global manufacturing produced 8,249,683 million pesos. Of that, 3,648,915 million pesos was domestic value added (44.2%). Within the domestic share, inputs bought from Mexican suppliers came to 1,216,574 million pesos, or 14.7% of output. The remainder of the domestic share, 29.5% of output, is the value the plants add themselves, chiefly wages and operating surplus. The rest, 55.8% of output, is imported content.
Global manufacturing makes up a large share of the whole. It accounts for 40.4% of Mexico's total manufacturing output, and its domestic value added alone equals 17.9% of all manufacturing production.
Twelve years in one line
The series starts at 39.4% in 2013 and rises to 44.1% in 2015. In 2016, it eases to 42.3%, then holds near 40% to 41% through 2022. Then it rises to 42.7% in 2023 and to 44.2% in 2024 (a preliminary figure). The average for 2013 to 2024 is 41.5%.
A rising share can come from two different places. Mexican suppliers may be replacing imported inputs, or plants may be adding more value themselves, through higher wages or more process steps done in Mexico. INEGI's split shows both parts for each year; the headline alone does not say which is moving.
The exchange rate also matters, because the account is kept in current pesos. When the peso is strong, imported inputs cost fewer pesos, and that alone can lift the domestic share without any change on the factory floor. Comparisons between years therefore carry the effect of the peso.
Where the Mexican value sits
Vehicles account for the largest share. In 2024, car and truck production accounted for 26.9% of domestic value added in global manufacturing, and auto parts another 18.6%: together, close to half. Behind them comes a long tail: computers and peripherals at 3.8%, medical, dental and laboratory equipment at 3.8%, audio and video equipment at 3.6%, electronic components at 3.3%, and beverages at 2.2%. The ten largest branches account for 67.3% of the total.
The same activity employed 2,310,299 people in paid jobs in 2024, 30.6% of all manufacturing employment and 3.7% fewer than in 2023. Auto parts alone account for 19.5% of those jobs.
The bonded plants today
For a current picture, INEGI's monthly statistics on the IMMEX program, which lets plants import inputs without paying duty when they export finished goods, are the closest measure. In August 2026, 6,465 establishments operated under the program, 5,165 of them in manufacturing. They employed 3,176,726 people, about the same as a year earlier, and their monthly income was 693,315 million pesos, 58.5% from foreign markets.
What the number is not
It is not the Mexican content of each product. It is an average across a whole sector, and a single export can sit far above or far below it.
It is not the regional value content that decides whether a good qualifies for the USMCA's tariff preferences. That rule counts inputs from all three member countries and is calculated product by product, so a vehicle with large inputs from the United States can qualify even if its Mexican value added is modest.
Nor is it the OECD's trade-in-value-added estimate for Mexico, which uses a different method, covers all exports rather than one manufacturing segment, and runs on an older data year.
The 2025 figures
For two years in a row, more of each peso of export output has stayed in Mexico. INEGI's 2025 figures will show whether that continues, and whether it comes from Mexican suppliers or a stronger peso.
Sources
- INEGI, Valor Agregado de Exportación de la Manufactura Global 2024, press release 155/25, December 5, 2025
- INEGI, VAEMG 2024, results report 53/25 (the 2013 to 2024 series), December 5, 2025
- INEGI, Estadística Mensual del Programa IMMEX, August 2026, October 26, 2026
- Wikipedia, Maquiladora (context), October 27, 2026
Figures checked at their original sources on October 27, 2026.