A Nissan factory in Aguascalientes.
An employee looks at the production line during a media tour of Nissan's new plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, November 11, 2013. Reuters/ Henry Romero

The Mexican Automotive Industry Association has reported record levels of auto production in 2013, with exports breaking records for the fourth straight year, according to El Universal. Last year, auto makers in Mexico produced nearly 3 million vehicles (2,933,465 in total, an uptick of 1.7 percent from 2012), making it the eighth biggest carmaker in the world and the fourth biggest exporter. But benefits for workers in the country’s auto plants have not paralleled the boom in production, as wages remain far behind those of workers’ peers in the United States.

AutoNews notes that an average worker at a Mexican auto assembly plant makes about $4-5 an hour, compared to $14 hourly for Tier 2 workers (relative new guys) and $28 for the old-timers at the Big Three plants in Detroit. That wage gap has persisted since the 1994 roll-out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) helped kick off Mexico’s boom in auto production and automotive jobs, which increased 50 percent in the 20 years since NAFTA’s passage. But in a recent article on the agreement, the Associated Press noted that manufacturing industry wages in Mexico were, on average, 15 percent of US workers’ wages in 1997, and only 18 percent in 2012. That wage gap is rarely compensated for by Mexico’s lower cost of living, which is a consequence less of cheap goods than of subsidized basics like transportation, housing, food and health care.

Asian carmakers have contributed to much of the growth in jobs; in recent times, as the Washington Post observed in April 2012, Nissan has displaced Volkswagon as the country’s “national brand," both through marketing and by transforming once-tiny municipalities like Aguascalientes into little Detroits. Mexico’s proximity to US markets and relatively low pay standards make it especially attractive. In 2013, 68 percent of exports from Mexican auto makers were bound for the United States, while another 8 percent and 12.7 percent were headed to Canada and other parts of Latin America, respectively.

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