Retail sales in Mexico grew only 0.1% in March 2026 and closed the first quarter with a similar advance compared to the end of the last quarter of 2025, according to data from the Monthly Survey of Commercial Enterprises by INEGI. In practical terms: the Mexican retail sector sold in January, February, and March exactly the same as in the previous three months. The stagnation does not occur in a vacuum but in a context of a weakened labor market, loss of purchasing power of remittances, accelerated inflation, and consumer confidence that has accumulated 15 consecutive months in negative territory.
The aggregate number, however, hides internal movements that tell a more precise story about where spending is migrating.
What fell
The categories with the worst performance in the quarter were leisure items with a contraction of 9.81%, second-hand goods with a decline of 8.34%, pets, gifts, and personal use items with a decrease of 4.72%, perfumery and jewelry with a drop of 3.83%, and automobiles and trucks with a decline of 1.90%.
What grew
On the opposite end, computers, phones, and communication equipment led with an increase of 11.25%, followed by motorcycles and other motor vehicles with growth of 9.67%, online shopping with a rise of 4.58%, department stores with an increase of 3.75%, and interior decoration items with an uptick of 3.69%.
The macroeconomic context pressuring the consumer
The labor market lost 227,155 net jobs between January and March, according to the National Occupation and Employment Survey. Remittances, although they grew by 1.4% in dollars to reach 14,457 million, fell by 12.7% in pesos because the exchange rate averaged 17.55 pesos per dollar during the quarter, an appreciation of the peso that eroded the value of those transfers for receiving families. Inflation progressively accelerated during the quarter, reaching 4.59% in March, its highest level since October 2024.
On a year-on-year basis, retail sales grew by 2.4% in March, a slowdown compared to 3.2% in February, and accumulated an advance of 3.7% in the quarter, a figure that largely reflects the favorable base from the second half of 2025 rather than a real strength of current consumption.
From the perspective with which next+ follows the retail and business ecosystem in Mexico, this INEGI data serves as an operational map for entire industries. The most important takeaway is that the Mexican consumer is spending less on cosmetic and discretionary categories to concentrate their budget on productivity tools, connectivity, and light transport. For commercial, marketing, and strategic planning teams operating in retail, accurately understanding what category their product falls into within that division is, at this moment, one of the most relevant variables to anticipate what will come in the second quarter.