Mexico’s Unpaid Household Work Satellite Account (2024)

Does work without pay also have no economic value? Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) brings unpaid household services into economic accounting through the 2024 results report of its Cuenta Satélite del Trabajo No Remunerado de los Hogares de México. Released on 25 November 2025, the report presents preliminary estimates for 2024. Its feminist significance lies in making the work sustaining everyday life publicly visible, while leaving a distance between statistical recognition and income or decision-making power.

What does a satellite account measure?

The account uses sources including the National Time Use Survey (ENUT) to establish hours, then values them using occupational hourly-income information from labor surveys and national-accounts data. It does not pay household members wages. It provides supplementary accounting for household services usually outside the core national accounts, challenging the equation of no market transaction with no production.

In the main series, unpaid domestic and care work by people aged 12 and over was valued at about eight trillion Mexican pesos at current prices in 2024, equivalent to 23.9% of national GDP. “Equivalent” compares a satellite-account estimate with GDP; it does not mean this unpaid service value is already income recorded within core GDP. The results report distinguishes this series from complementary measurements.

Participation is not equal sharing

Women made up 53.9% of people undertaking this work, but supplied 73.8% of its total hours and 72.6% of its estimated economic value. These measures answer different questions: who participates, how much time is contributed, and how that time is valued. Asking whether men “also do housework” can obscure differences in frequency, tasks and burdens. The denominators are participants, total hours and total estimated value respectively, not every woman’s allocation of time.

Activity categories sharpen the picture. Women contributed 82.0% of the estimated value of food-related work. This does not mean women spent 82% of their time cooking: it identifies their share of that activity’s total imputed value. Such distinctions help ask why recurring tasks are persistently assigned to women, rather than celebrate a supposedly natural aptitude for care.

Emotional care changes the boundary of the figures

ENUT first collected emotional-care information in 2024. To preserve comparability with earlier years, the main estimate of 23.9% excludes this new measurement. Including emotional care in domestic and care work by people aged 12 and over produces a value equivalent to 26.3% of GDP. Adding production of goods for own use and unpaid household services by children aged 5–11 brings the complementary total to 28.3%. These are progressively broader scopes: 23.9% and 26.3% cannot be added together, and the new scope cannot be appended to the old series as evidence of a sudden increase in work.

This change makes the question of what counts as care work more visible. Yet the survey category of emotional care does not automatically encompass all mental load, availability or responsibility for relationships. A wider statistical boundary still requires attention to activity definitions and experiences that resist being recorded as hours.

When does economic value become a right?

The report’s average annual net imputed values per participant are 82,339 pesos for women and 34,695 for men. Net values exclude the social-benefit component. These are estimates of unpaid production, not actual earnings or prescribed wage entitlements. A larger estimated contribution therefore does not establish a higher standard of living or greater bargaining power for its producer.

Feminist analysis also raises a question about valuation: when care is priced by reference to market remuneration, can existing low pay continue to limit its recognition? This is a political question prompted by the method, not a causal result established by the report. Statistics can inform public care provision, redistribution of time and social protection, but cannot substitute for those institutional choices.

The report also explains that updated ENUT and population-estimate sources revised the historical series. Changes to an earlier year across publication versions cannot simply be read as changes in household behavior. These preliminary descriptive estimates do not explain every cause of inequality.

Read alongside IBGE’s Brazilian gender indicators to examine differences among women. Federici’s Wages Against Housework brings household labor into a political debate about work and refusal. AWID’s argument for domestic workers’ rights asks that reducing some people’s unpaid labor also protect the paid workers who take on those tasks. These connections link evidence, demands and labor rights; they do not establish directly comparable national figures.