Every minute, Michoacán exports $8,722 (almost 160,000 pesos) worth of agricultural products. The epicenter of criminal violence unleashed by organized crime that has been entrenched in its territory for decades, the state remains Mexico’s leading agricultural exporter.

Last year, $4.584 billion came from its soils through avocados, a lot yes, but also from berries, corn, fig, mango, guava, pineapple, sugar cane, jicama and lemon, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), the Bank of Mexico and the Ministry of Economy.

Nearly 72 percent of the state’s exports are related to agriculture (the rest are manufactured goods and minerals), making it by far the state with the largest export-oriented agribusiness in the country. Sinaloa, which comes in second, exported $2.516 billion in agricultural products during the same period, practically half the amount exported by its counterpart in the southwest.

Expeller of migrants

Even though it is the main exporter of agri-food products – with 90 percent of its production going to the United States – remittances are the biggest source of foreign exchange for Michoacán.

Last year, the entity that for years positioned itself as one of the main senders of migrants to the United States received $5.6465 billion in family remittances.

In a historical breakdown, from 2003 to September 2025, the state received $72.906 billion in family remittances, practically one out of every 10 of the $754.5238 billion that have arrived in the country in the same period.

Remittances not only exceed the revenue generated by agricultural exports, but they also triple the investment made by foreign companies in the state.

From 2006 to mid-2025, Michoacán received $24,570.9 million in foreign direct investment (FDI), an amount that is largely the result of the flow of resources that arrived in the state in 2007 and 2021.

As the center of an export-oriented agricultural industry, 17 out of every 100 people in the state are employed in primary activities, from agriculture to fishing and livestock farming. However, the main employer is the service sector, with 61.3 percent.

High informality

However, the average monthly salary in the state was 6,380 pesos in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Ministry of Economy. This amount, besides being below the national minimum wage, coexists with informality rates that exceed the national average.

In Michoacán, practically seven out of ten workers do so in the informal sector, without any type of job security.

The informality rate in the state, which reached 69.5 percent in the second quarter of 2025, is above the national average of 54.8 percent, and places it as the state with the eighth highest proportion of informal labor in Mexico.

Formal job creation is also lacking: since 2017, when 30,551 formal jobs were created, there has been no recovery. Last year, only 7,303 jobs were reported, and at the same time, one in three households cannot cover their basic food needs with the income from their work.

Although there have been decreases in the proportion of people living in poverty, from 54.2 percent in 2016 to 34.4 percent last year, a third of the population in the state lacks access to some minimum right such as health, education or food.