Mexicans Abroad Sent a Record $52 Billion Back Home Last Year

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico received a record $51.6 billion in remittances last year, helping to soften the impact on consumers from a stalled economy.

The money sent by Mexican workers abroad jumped 27% compared to 2020, according to central bank figures published Tuesday. That increase was driven by a variety of factors including U.S. stimulus checks to residents, a desire by Mexican workers to assist their struggling families back at home, and money for foreign migrants stuck in Mexico.

“This historic quantity of remittances is not an achievement of the Mexican economy because it is due to the U.S. recovery. In Mexico, the recovery is going slowly,” said Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis at Banco BASE. “But remittances do help growth because they drive consumption.”

Remittances hit $4.76 billion in December, slightly below the median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey.

The recovery of Mexican workers' employment in the U.S. was better than that of the overall U.S. population, with over 7 million Mexicans employed there by December, according to an analysis by the Mexico City-based Center for Latin American Monetary Studies. Other countries in Latin America, including Colombia and Guatemala, saw similar leaps in contributions from abroad, it said.

“The better-than-expected growth rate for remittances has been seen in almost all parts of the world,” said Dilip Ratha, the head of The Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, a project of the World Bank, who expects remittances to continue to rise.

“In the next five or ten years, there is no scenario involving a fall in the stock of international migrants. That is going to grow because of income differences and demographic change.”