Work and pensions: what each party thinks

This is the test's least contested theme: across its two questions no pair of parties sits at opposite ends of the scale, and on one of them everyone is on the same side. All eight back the minimum wage gaining ground on prices every year, although PAZ does so only by estimate: its texts call for fair wages without mentioning the minimum. Strong agreement comes from the PT and the PRI, the first because its platform pledges to defend annual raises and the second because its declaration of principles calls for pay that outstrips inflation; the rest sit one step lower. The amendment barring a minimum below inflation passed the Chamber unanimously in September 2024, but the current Constitution does not include it. Morena presents the recovery of purchasing power as an achievement to protect, without committing to a fixed rule, and SOMOS proposes an hourly minimum calculated from the cost of the basic basket.

The Afores, the funds that manage workers' individual retirement accounts, are more divisive, though not along the expected lines. The only party in favor of replacing them with a public system is the PT, which wants to bring back pay-as-you-go financing with a state-run manager, while keeping each worker's account. Its partners do not follow. Morena takes an intermediate position: in 2024 it promised to restore collective insurance, but in 2026 its government ruled out returning to the old ISSSTE scheme and proposes strengthening PensionISSSTE, the public manager already operating within the current system. The PVEM is also in the middle, with a program that aims at universal insurance funded by taxes and a platform that only proposes adjustments.

Facing them, the PAN, the PRI and Movimiento Ciudadano disagree, each in its own way: the PAN defends saving in individual accounts; the PRI objects to tapping those savings to fill the government's Pension Fund for Well-being, a move its leader called a "heist"; Movimiento Ciudadano wants more competition and lower fees. PAZ talks of rebuilding pensions with national bonds, and SOMOS, also newly registered, of an undefined single pension scheme, so its intermediate position is estimated.

Morena and the PAN end up one point apart across both questions, closer than Morena and the PT. Only two positions are estimates, one per new party.