Record-breaking crisis: Almost three out of every ten workers in Argentina are poor

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The number of poor workers in Argentina is record-breaking, at least in the last decade. In 2021, 28.2% of the working population aged 18 and over (two out of every seven) failed to get the job that would lift them out of the scourge of living below the poverty line.

This was estimated by a document prepared by the Observatory of the Argentine Social Debt (ODSA) of the Pontificial Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), released today, and stated that this percentage reached 27.4% last year. In 2010, on the other hand, it was 17.6%, which implies that this situation showed an increase of more than ten points in eleven years.

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The data were presented at a seminar by the sociologist and director of ODSA, Agustín Salvia, and with contributions to the debate by experts Eduardo Fidanza and Martín Rapetti.

According to the detailed analysis carried out by the house of studies, between 2019 and 2021, the purchasing power of labor income of the total employed decreased 7.4%. This year, the average monthly income of the total employed was ARS 50,534 (US$494). But that number changes significantly according to the chosen population segmentation.

For example, the average income of fully employed workers was ARS 68,973, while the average of those with a precarious job was ARS 44,798. The standard for those in unstable underemployment (“la changa”) was ARS 18,637, according to ODSA data.

“The particularities of the health crisis process and the change in the composition of employment led to the fact that, between 2019 and 2021, the monthly labor income of those employed in the micro-informal sector had almost no variation in their purchasing power (+1.8%), while that of workers in the formal private sector decreased 7.7% and that of those in the public sector 12.3%,” estimated the document coordinated by Salvia.

WORKING POOR

According to the UCA document, most of the working poor are employed in “changas” (unstable underemployment). 58.2% of those users did not overcome the poverty line this year. Meanwhile, the majority of the employed poor are found in the micro-informal sector (37.6%).

Of these workers, 35%, the highest percentage, live in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, and most of them are men (29.3%). On the other hand, 32.7% of these working poor people are relatively young: between 18 and 34 years old.

According to ODSA, between 2019 and 2020, the unemployment rate went from 10.6% to 14.2%. “The subsequent reactivation, the effect of a persistent discouragement and the licenses due to Covid-19 generated that in 2021 unemployment will decrease to 9.1% of the economically active population,” estimated the ODSA, according to its surveys.

However, the technicians of the private research center warned that the drop in the employment rate, if it had not been accompanied by a significant reduction in the activity rate -which led to the recording of these drops as inactive and not unemployed- would have implied an unemployment rate of 28.5% in 2020. This year, the exact figure would have been 12.5%.

“The discouragement effect generated a change in the composition of the labor market that cushioned or hid the worsening of the labor situation,” said the ODSA technicians and closed: “Despite this, in 2021, only 42.1% of the economically active population had a full employment with full rights, while 29.6% had a precarious job; 19.2%, an unstable underemployment; and 9.1%, a situation of unemployment.”

“Work is recovering, but it is unregistered work,” Salvia specified in dialogue with the media. “What has been happening is that employment in Argentina is becoming precarious,” said the sociologist about the characteristics of the current recovery. “There is a permanence in time of this problem beyond the covid cycle. We are in a decade of stagnation,” he closed.

A special UCA panel on 2019, 2020, and 2021 -always on the same target population- indicated that the active people who maintained full (quality) employment during those years reached only 29.6%. On the other hand, those who never had access to this opportunity accounted for 39.5% of those surveyed by the ODSA during that period.