Mexico's growth since 1961: from about 6.7% a year to about 2%
From 1961 to 1980, Mexico's real GDP grew about 6.7% a year. From 1981 to 2025, the average was about 2%, with four deep falls and the IMF's forecasts missing in both directions.
INEGI's timely estimate, published on 30 October 2026, put Mexico's growth in the third quarter of 2026 at 3.2% year over year, seasonally adjusted. Our sister site covers the quarter itself. What follows sets that pace against the record since 1961.
Two eras
From 1961 to 1980, Mexico's real GDP grew at an average of about 6.7% a year, according to World Bank figures, and in seven of those twenty years growth reached 8% or more. The postwar boom, from the 1940s to about 1970, is known as the Mexican Miracle, as Wikipedia summarizes it.
The 1982 debt crisis ended that era. Growth was 9.6% in 1981, about zero in 1982, and -4.6% in 1983. From 1981 to 2025, the average was about 2.0% a year. The 1990s averaged 3.6% a year despite 1995; 2011 to 2020, including 2020, averaged under 1%; and 2021 to 2025 averaged 2.9%, lifted by the rebound from 2020. Over the ten years from 2016 to 2025, the average was about 1.1%. The decade and long-run averages are our arithmetic on the World Bank series.
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Percent a year, compound average. Each bar is labelled by its first year: 1961-1970 6.8; 1971-1980 6.6; 1981-1990 1.8; 1991-2000 3.6; 2001-2010 1.2; 2011-2020 0.9; 2021-2025 2.9. Our arithmetic on the World Bank series.
Four deep falls
Since 1981, four years saw falls of more than 4%: 1983 (-4.6%), 1995 (-5.9%, after the December 1994 devaluation), 2009 (-6.3%) and 2020 (-8.4%), the deepest fall in the series. Each was followed by a recovery, with growth of 3.5% in 1984, 6.2% in 1996, 5.0% in 2010 and 6.0% in 2021. The 2020 fall came after a year of slight contraction, -0.4% in 2019.
What the experts expected
The IMF's October forecasts for the following year have missed in both directions. In October 2022, it expected 1.2% for 2023; the outcome was 3.1%. In October 2023, it expected 2.1% for 2024; the outcome was 1.4%. In October 2024, it expected 1.3% for 2025; the outcome was 0.6% in INEGI's original series. In its October 2026 World Economic Outlook, the IMF projects 1.5% for 2026 and 1.8% for 2027. The 2023 and 2024 outcomes come from the World Bank series. In those three years, the misses ranged from about 0.7 to about 1.9 percentage points, by our arithmetic.
Against that record, year-on-year growth of 3.2% in a single quarter is above the average since 1981, but it is not rare. Since 2001, seven full years reached 3.2% or more in the World Bank series, three of them in the recoveries after 2009 and 2020. INEGI's seasonally adjusted figure for January to September 2026, 1.9%, sits closer to the long-term average. INEGI is scheduled to publish the full third-quarter figures on 23 November 2026.
Sources
- World Bank, GDP growth (annual %), Mexico, NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG (updated 8 October 2026), read 2026-10-30. Link
- INEGI, Estimación Oportuna del PIB Trimestral, third quarter of 2026 (bulletin 673/26), 2026-10-30. Link
- INEGI, PIB Trimestral, fourth quarter of 2025 (bulletin 93/26), annual 2025, 2026-02-23. Link
- IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2022, annex table (Mexico 2023), 2022-10-11. Link
- IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2023, annex table (Mexico 2024), 2023-10-10. Link
- IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2024, chapter 1 (Mexico 2025), 2024-10-22. Link
- IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2026, chapter 1 (Mexico 2026 and 2027), 2026-10-13. Link
- Wikipedia, Mexican miracle (context), read 2026-10-30. Link
The same release, as this week's numbers, on our sister site: rutanamex.com/blog/mexico-gdp-third-quarter-2026.
Newer: Mexico's fertility since 1960: from 6.8 children per woman to under 2 · Older: Mexico's formal jobs since 2000: nearly twice as many, through two large losses