Aguascalientes
Aguascalientes was founded on 22 October 1575 by Juan de Montoro and eleven companions to shelter travellers and silver convoys on the road between Zacatecas and Mexico City.
Capital: Aguascalientes · Area: 5,616 km² · Checked 3 Nov 2026
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Aguascalientes at a glance
INEGI publishes IMMEX export-plant counts by state only in its database, not in the monthly bulletin we could read, so no count is shown here rather than an estimate; where Book 6 gives a share, it is in the text below.
This is Aguascalientes
Aguascalientes was founded on 22 October 1575 by Juan de Montoro and eleven companions to shelter travellers and silver convoys on the road between Zacatecas and Mexico City. Real de Asientos, founded by Diego de Ibarra in 1548, is older still. For centuries haciendas drove the regional economy, and in the Porfirian era the Ferrocarril Central Mexicano made the capital a railway city. The Feria de San Marcos traces its roots to 1828, when it was a grape fair. Calvillo is Mexico's largest guava producer. Since the 1980s textiles, automobiles and electronics have driven growth, and two Nissan plants operate in the state. INEGI has been headquartered in the capital since 1985. The 2020 census counted 1,425,607 residents. 18
Who it suits
It suits an automotive supplier that wants the Bajío’s lowest payroll tax and can build or wait for space, and it’s a risk for one tied to a single assembler. 5
The Bajío suits a supplier to automotive and aerospace makers already in Mexico, a company that sells to the Mexican and American markets, and a plant with moderate load that values a deep supply base and a choice of mid-sized labor markets. Guanajuato offers the most room to hire and the lowest formal wages of the 4 Bajío states; Querétaro offers a deep engineering base, the calmest large city of the four, and the highest wage; Aguascalientes offers the lowest payroll tax and the least standing space. It suits less well a company whose only customer is across the border and whose freight is time-sensitive, which Chapters 13 and 14 serve better, and a very large electrical load in Querétaro until the substations arrive. A company that will run trucks on the MEX-45D and MEX-57D, or place people in León, should budget for security as a line, not a contingency.
What to check first
- Start with power, in writing: which substation serves the lot, how many megawatts are free today, and when the next block arrives, above all in Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Guanajuato.
- Then the route: the corridor sections the plant’s trucks will use, with tracking-firm or insurer data for each, and the hours they will run.
- Then the labor market of the specific city, not the state: this year’s turnover from the plants nearest the site, formal job growth, and whether the anchor customers nearby are expanding or leaving, as Aguascalientes showed.
- Then vacancy, from 2 or 3 brokers, since the sources disagree.
- Chapter 23 takes those checks from shortlist to site.
Weighing Aguascalientes for a plant, a warehouse or an office? Work with us.
Industry and plants
A creator, citing a supplier notice, reported Nissan’s COMPAS car plant would close on May 31, 2026, and a public reference lists it as closed from that date. The state held 1.3% of IMMEX establishments in June 2024. 5
Unemployment was 2.6% in the second quarter of 2026 (INEGI), against 2.7 nationally, and informality was 42.5% against 55.1. Lokus Data’s IMSS series showed 361,906 formal jobs in July 2026, down 1.0% year over year. 5
Output by sector, 2024
Share of the state’s output, current prices 16
- 47.3%Services +2.0% real, 2024
- 40.7%Industry: manufacturing, construction, energy, mining −6.5% real, 2024
- 4.7%Agriculture, livestock, fishing +1.8% real, 2024
- 7.3%Taxes on products, net
Among the 32, measure by measure
Each bar is one state, largest on the left, in the colour of its corridor; Aguascalientes is the bright one with the white edge. 1 2 3 7 6
Beside its neighbours in the Bajío and Center-North
Share of Mexico’s output, 2024
Exports, 2025
Formal private jobs, July 2026
Informal work, Q2 2026
Aguascalientes against Mexico
Coloured: the state. Grey: the whole country.
Safety, taxes and incentives
INEGI counted 3,638 businesses victimized per 10,000 in 2023, the second-highest of the 32, against 2,722 nationally. The Mexico Peace Index 2026 ranks it the twelfth most peaceful; the USA advisory of May 29, 2026, sets it at Level 2. 5
Its 2026 payroll tax, 2.5%, is the corridor’s lowest (BHR). The World Bank ranked it first for property registration in 2016, and IMCO eighth for competitiveness in 2026. A governor is elected June 6, 2027. 5
Cities, ports, airports, crossings, power and water
Aguascalientes
The capital: 863,893 people (2020) 17
Jesús María
City: 43,012 people (2010) 17
Calvillo
City: 58,250 people (2020) 17
Jesús Terán Peredo International Airport
International airport (AGU) · 985,253 passengers in 2025 17
Power and water
Chapter 6 finds the corridor’s power problem is more about connection than price. Drought is its hazard (Chapter 7). 5
Logistics and crossings
It sits on the Mexico City-Laredo highway and rail trunk, several hundred miles from the border (Tetakawi, 2022). 5
Development pole
No federal development pole has been declared here. 5
The recent arrivals
- Oct 2025Nissan (COMPAS)A creator from Aguascalientes reported in October 2025, citing a notice to suppliers, that Nissan’s COMPAS plant, which built Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz vehicles, would close on May 31, 2026, with Infiniti production ending in November 2025; a public reference lists the plant as closed from May 31, 2026, though no Nissan statement was found. 8
The average daily IMSS contribution wage was 652.42 pesos in July 2026, twelfth of the 32, against a national average of 673.9. 5
Book 6’s cost model prices only Monterrey, Querétaro and Mérida in full.
Rent per square metre, freight to your customers and the fully loaded cost of your own workforce are figures we prepare for each client, not numbers to publish: work with us.
Sources, each with its date
- INEGI, Encuesta Intercensal 2025 (people in private dwellings; median age from the tabulates), 22 Sep 2026 · link
- INEGI, PIB por Entidad Federativa 2024, current prices; share our arithmetic over the national 33,506,847 million pesos, 5 Dec 2025 · link
- INEGI, Exportaciones Trimestrales por Entidad Federativa, the four quarters of 2025 summed (our arithmetic), preliminary, 31 Mar 2026 · link
- Wikipedia, List of states of Mexico, citing INEGI (continental area, 2016), 22 Oct 2026 · link
- Book 6, Where to Go in Mexico, Part V, with the sources listed there, Nov 2026 · link
- INEGI, ENOE second quarter 2026, bulletin 503/26, as compiled in Book 6, Part V, 25 Aug 2026 · link
- IMSS open data as processed by Lokus Data (private formal jobs and average daily contribution wage; the national wage of 673.9 pesos covers all IMSS-insured workers), as compiled in Book 6, Jul 2026 · link
- Book 6, Where to Go in Mexico, chapter 15, The Bajío and Center-North, with the sources listed there, Nov 2026 · link
- INEGI, quarterly state exports, bulletin 609/26, as compiled in Book 6, 30 Sep 2026 · link
- Secretaría de Economía, foreign direct investment by state of destination, as reproduced by the Chamber of Deputies, Gaceta Parlamentaria, 14 Apr 2026 · link
- IMCO, Índice de Competitividad Estatal 2026, 21 Sep 2026 · link
- BHR, bulletin on state payroll-tax rates for 2026, as compiled in Book 6, Jan 2026 · link
- Institute for Economics and Peace, Mexico Peace Index 2026; USA Department of State travel advisory of 29 May 2026, 29 May 2026 · link
- INEGI, ENVE 2024 (businesses victimized in 2023, per 10,000), 10 Dec 2024 · link
- INEGI, ITAEE first quarter 2026 (change on a year), from Book 6, Figure VII.18, Nov 2026 · link
- INEGI, PIB por Entidad Federativa 2024, the state's press release (shares at current prices, growth at constant prices; taxes on products are 100 less the three activities, our arithmetic), 5 Dec 2025 · link
- Wikipedia, the city, airport, port and crossing pages (EN and ES), read 3 November 2026, 3 Nov 2026 · link
- Wikipedia and the pages listed: Aguascalientes (en); Aguascalientes (es), 3 Nov 2026 · link
Pictures
- Catedral de Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes- Aguascalientes cathedral (20232942553): Comisión Mexicana de Filmaciones from México D. F., México, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
- AGUASCALIENTES CITY: Sfwuser, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons