Living Wage Benchmark Report: Baja Carlifornia, Mexico (January 2021)

We present estimates of the living wage in the municipalities of Ensenada and San Quintín, which are located in the center and south of Baja California, México. Economic activity in these municipalities is concentrated in agriculture and fishing, and to a much lesser extent in industry. The poverty rates are considerably higher than average for Baja California, but somewhat lower than average for Mexico. In the calculation, we used the Anker and Anker (2017) methodology and data from both primary and secondary sources. We obtained food prices and housing costs directly through a price survey in the two areas studied. We inferred the costs of goods and services other than food and housing from secondary data sources. These secondary data sources, mainly household income and expenditure surveys, do not distinguish between municipalities, but do distinguish between urban and rural areas. The fact that Ensenada is predominantly urban and San Quintín rural and small towns, allowed us to obtain estimates of these costs for each municipality. We show that the living wage in the municipality of Ensenada is MXN 15,929 (US$ 800) per month, which consists of take-home pay of MXN 13,539 (US$ 680) and MXN 2,389 (US$ 120) in income tax and social security. For San Quintín, the living wage is MXN 15,009 (US$ 754) per month consisting of take-home pay of MXN 12,835 (US$ 645) with MXN 2,174 (US$ 109) in social security contribution and income tax. Although these values are similar with only a 5.5% difference between them, we recommend using the living wage that corresponds to each jurisdiction. However, for those companies that have workers in both municipalities and that consider it impractical to have, or cannot pay, two different living wages, we recommend using the higher estimate to ensure that the wage is sufficient to accommodate all workers in the study area.