Cheaper

Wages,

U.S. vs Mexico

Every once in a while I receive email from people who just don’t believe it’s that much cheaper to live in Mexico than it is to live in America.

Of course, it all depends on how you spend your peso or dollar… just how well you’ve learned to make that dollar stretch…but, beyond that, the simple facts are these: 

The 2010 minimum DAILY wage in Mexico is set according to three different zones in Mexico. They are:

Zone A: 

The states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Mexico City and some municipalities of the states of Mexico, Sonora, Tamaulipas Veracruz and Chihuahua  at 57.46 pesos a day. 

Zone B: 

Includes Monterrey and Guadalajara, plus the states of Jalisco, Nuevo León and some municipalities (not covered by A above) of the States of Sonora, Tamaulipas y Veracruz. at 55.84 pesos a day. 

Zone C: 

Is scheduled for the smaller cities, plus the states of Aguascalientes, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Yucatán, Zacatecas, Morelos, Michoacán, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Durango, Chiapas, Coahuila, Campeche, and some municipalities of Veracruz, Nuevo León, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, and Chihuahua (not covered by A and B above), rose to 54.47 pesos a day. 

Remember, an approximation for converting pesos to dollars is ten to one – but it does vary daily.  Actually, I just checked for today, 8-29-10, it’s at 12.99 to one.  But, for quick changing, using 10 to 1, the highest daily rate of 57.46 pesos equals 4.50558U.S.D. 

Yes, that’s right, $4.50 a day.

Now, I defy any of you to live in America on that…doubled, or even tripled. 

And yet, Mexicans do live on that amount, and they are not starving.  They are buying their veggies at native stands – their meat at native stands, etc., and they are raising food themselves.    

They may not have high speed internet, but that’s okay too – they may be too busy carefully watching their children to bother with such stuff.  

Oh, by the way, the minimum wage, HOURLY in America is $7.45  (States may individually set a minimum, in which case the higher of the two is the controlling minimum wage for that state.) 

Mexico’s minimum daily wage is based on an 8-hour work day.  8 hours of work = about $4.50 U.S. 

Mexico’s work week is 6 days. 

America’s daily minimum wage, based on an 8-hour day.  8 hours of work = about $60.00 U.S.  That is approximately 13 times Mexico’s minimum wage. 

So, you don’t think it’s cheaper to live in Mexico?  Amazing!!