1 in 7 Yucatán Residents Was Born Somewhere Else

About one in seven people living in Yucatán today was born somewhere else. At the same time, the share of residents who speak an Indigenous language keeps shrinking. Immigrants in Yucatán, including so-called expat communities, are still a tiny minority of the population.

Those are two key findings from the 2025 Intercensal Survey, released Tuesday by INEGI, Mexico’s national statistics agency. The survey updates the 2020 census at the halfway point before the next full count in 2030.

More newcomers

In 2025, Yucatán had 2,502,326 residents living in private homes. Of those, 86.1% were born in the state, 12.9% in another Mexican state and 0.8% in another country.

Combined, 13.7% of residents were born outside Yucatán, or more than 340,000 people. That’s up from 12.3% in the 2020 census.

Expats and immigrants — those born in another country — comprise a small share of the population. At 0.8%, that’s roughly 20,000 people.

Fewer Indigenous-language speakers

The survey counted 520,119 people ages 3 and older who speak an Indigenous language, or 21.4% of that age group. In Yucatán, that mostly means Maya. Five years earlier, the figure was 23.7%.

Identity tells a different story. About 1.4 million people, or 56.5% of the population, identified as Indigenous in 2025.

The drop echoes warnings from linguists that fewer families are passing the language on to their children, even as Maya identity remains strong.

Older, more educated, more online

Population growth is slowing. Between 2020 and 2025, Yucatán grew at an average annual rate of 1.4%, down from 2% between 2015 and 2020. The median age rose from 30 to 32. Mexico as a whole reached 130.9 million people, with a median age of 32, according to the national figures.

Education numbers improved across the board. Illiteracy among people 15 and older fell from 6.1% to 4.4%. Average schooling climbed from 9.6 to 10.3 years. School attendance rose among children ages 3 to 5, from 72.1% to 81.9%, and among young people ages 15 to 24, from 46.8% to 50.7%.

Home life has changed, too. The share of households with internet access jumped from 55.3% to 79.3%. Cellphone access rose from 88.7% to 94.2%. More families own a car or pickup truck, 42.4% compared with 39.3% five years ago. Motorcycle and scooter ownership climbed faster, from 24.6% to 35.7%.

Work and commuting

In 2025, 57 of every 100 people ages 12 and older were in the workforce, and 98.5% had jobs. Services employed nearly half of all workers (48.4%), followed by retail (19.2%) and industry (13.7%).

Plenty of people cross municipal lines every day. Some 16% of workers held jobs outside the municipality where they live, and 7.9% of students attended school in a different municipality.

INEGI gathered the data between Oct. 6 and Nov. 14, 2025, from a sample of more than 7.3 million homes nationwide. The results offer figures at the national, state and municipal levels.

The overall picture is a state that is still growing, though more slowly, while its population becomes older, better educated, more connected and more likely to have roots elsewhere.