The global economic crisis in 2008 impacts Latin America in a context in which a group of progressive gov­ernments had succeeded in managing the destiny of their countries. This paper analyses, at subnational level, the experiences of three countries, in the areas of employment and income inequality: Brazil and Ecuador, in which economic policies were reoriented towards a strong social approach, and which are compared with Mexico, a nation in which the Neo-liberal model was reinforced. The results enable to highlight that while inequality in wage income has been reduced in all those countries as a whole, that has not been the case for specific regions of those nations.