Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s sixth-largest city and a critical manufacturing hub directly across the border from El Paso, shed approximately 57,500 maquiladora jobs from mid-2023 to mid-2025.
This contraction represents an 18 percent loss of manufacturing workers. It is a byproduct of Juarez’s evolution toward higher value-added manufacturing activity. This development also reflects weakening U.S. demand for products from the area’s longstanding automotive sector, along with increasing labor costs, peso appreciation and higher tariffs.
These pressures have accelerated a structural shift toward automation and away from low-margin, labor-intensive production.
Maquiladoras a key economic driver in northern Mexico…