More Than 28,000 Companies Have Closed During Javier Milei’s Argentina Tenure
Argentina · Economy
Key Facts
—Total closures 28,262 employing firms have been deregistered since Javier Milei took office, a 5.5% drop in the country’s formal business base.
—SMEs crushed Small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99.63% of all company closures, eroding the backbone of local employment.
—Job destruction 341,396 formal jobs were lost alongside those business closures, directly linking company failures to household income loss.
—Insolvency wave Preventive bankruptcy filings surged 130% in 2025 compared to 2023, signaling a deepening corporate debt crisis.
—Pace accelerating Almost two-thirds of the 5,654 companies lost in early 2026 were wiped out in just March and April, showing monthly deterioration.
Argentina’s private sector recorded more than 5,600 company failures in 2026, pushing total business losses to 28,262 since Javier Milei took office, according to official workplace data reviewed by Ámbito Financiero.
A record wave of business closures
The figures, drawn from the Superintendencia de Riesgos del Trabajo (SRT), show that 5,654 employing firms were deregistered in the first four months of 2026 alone. Of those, 1,814 companies were lost in April, equivalent to a monthly decline of 0.37% in the stock of active businesses.
The pace of destruction appears to be worsening month by month, leaving entire supply chains in transport, construction, and professional services severely disrupted.
The SRT is Argentina’s workplace-risk regulator, and its registry of employing firms serves as one of the most reliable real-time barometers of formal business health. When a company deregisters, it means the entity has ceased to have employees on the books — either through outright closure, suspension of operations, or a shift into the informal economy.
For a country where roughly half the workforce has historically operated outside formal channels, each deregistration represents not just a statistic but a household losing access to pension contributions, health coverage, and legal labor protections.
Industries hit hardest and the SME carnage
Sectoral data shows that transport and storage services suffered a 13.3% loss of companies during the first two years of Milei’s administration, followed by real estate at 10.4%, construction at 8%, and professional and scientific services at 7.4%. Crucially, businesses with up to 500 employees represented 99.63% of all closures recorded between November 2023 and August 2025, confirming that the adjustment is gutting the country’s small and medium-sized enterprise fabric rather than merely trimming peripheral firms.
This matters because SMEs in Argentina have long functioned as the primary job engine outside the public sector. Unlike large multinationals that can absorb currency shocks through export revenues or foreign-currency reserves, small firms typically operate in pesos, buy inputs priced in dollars, and depend almost entirely on local consumer demand.
When that demand contracts — as it does during a sharp fiscal adjustment — these businesses have no cushion. The transport sector’s outsized losses, for instance, reflect both the removal of fuel subsidies and a drop in freight volumes as domestic trade slows.
Insolvency indicators and the default crisis
Beyond formal deregistrations, corporate distress is spreading through courts and credit markets. Industrialist Leonardo Rosario Rosato reported that preventive bankruptcy filings (concursos preventivos) grew by 130 percent in 2025 compared to 2023.
This surge in court-supervised restructuring coincides with what analysts describe as the worst streak of corporate defaults since the pandemic, with significant cases emerging in manufacturing, agriculture, and energy. Higher local borrowing costs following exchange-rate reforms have left many firms unable to refinance dollar-denominated debt.
A concurso preventivo is an Argentine legal procedure that allows a company to negotiate with creditors under court supervision before falling into outright bankruptcy. The 130% jump is significant because it signals that business owners see enough future viability to attempt restructuring — yet the sheer volume suggests many will not succeed.
For foreign readers unfamiliar with Argentina’s business cycle, this pattern echoes the aftermath of previous devaluation episodes, where a sudden shift in the exchange rate instantly re-prices debts that were contracted when the peso was stronger.
Why this matters for residents and investors
For expatriates and foreign investors, the collapse in the number of employing firms signals a narrowing formal labor market and declining consumer demand in key urban areas. The loss of 341,396 registered jobs directly reduces disposable income, raises household loan delinquencies to their highest level since 2004, and weakens the customer base for service businesses.
Investors holding positions in Argentine corporate bonds or considering market entry must weigh official GDP growth projections against a landscape where newer firms are especially vulnerable, with 34 percent of all recent closures hitting businesses less than three years old.
The concentration of closures among young firms raises a structural question about the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Startups and recently founded companies typically lack the retained earnings or banking relationships to survive a prolonged demand slump.
If the current trend persists, Argentina risks losing not just today’s jobs but the next generation of businesses that would otherwise have matured into medium-sized employers.
The recovery narrative under strain
Proponents of Milei’s shock therapy point to cooling inflation and Moody’s forecast of 3 percent GDP growth in 2025 after a 3.5 percent contraction in 2024. Yet the mass extinction of small firms complicates the recovery story. With manufacturing capacity utilization hovering around 58 percent and banks reluctant to lend amid rising defaults, the gap is widening between a narrow set of financial-market winners and the thousands of shuttered storefronts and workshops that once employed Argentine families.
What to watch next is whether the deregistration pace eases if inflation continues to cool and real wages begin to recover, or whether the damage to SME supply chains becomes self-reinforcing — where each closure reduces demand for the surviving firms, triggering further failures. Another open question is whether the government introduces any targeted credit line or guarantee scheme for small businesses, or stays committed to a purely market-driven adjustment.
For bondholders, the key signal will be whether the default wave remains contained within the SME segment or begins to spread to larger listed companies that anchor Argentina’s international debt profile.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many companies have closed in Argentina under Javier Milei?
According to data from the SRT cited by Ámbito Financiero, 28,262 employing companies have been deregistered since Milei’s administration began, with more than 5,600 of those closures occurring in 2026.
What is driving the surge in business failures?
The shock therapy program which includes deep spending cuts, a sharp currency devaluation, and the removal of subsidies has reduced consumer purchasing power and raised operating costs. Preventive bankruptcy filings jumped 130 percent in 2025 compared to 2023, reflecting a severe squeeze on small and medium-sized firms.
Which sectors and companies are most affected?
Transport and storage services, real estate, construction, and manufacturing have lost the largest share of businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises with up to 500 employees account for 99.63 percent of all closures, while newer firms less than three years old are disproportionately wiped out.
Sources: Ámbito Financiero: Crisis de empresas y bajas durante la era Milei, Buenos Aires Times: Nearly 22,000 companies lost under Milei, El País: Milei struggles with the economy and losing popularity, Mazo4f: Management of Milei causes loss of 276,000 jobs, Fortune: Moody’s upgrade and Argentina’s rebound outlook
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