The turning point for the Argentine economy to break the 12 -year studies and almost half a century of fighting the decrease in the region’s growth ranking is that the activity can recover beyond the last peaks (November 2017) and not only compensates for the brutal fall of the first semester of 2024. The impact in an electoral year means that consumption (on average) increases, demand expands in the labor market and that ensures growth in salaries.
Take note. It does not mean that the crisis was forgotten, but after the bouncing of the third quarter, in the fourth quarter of 2024 and in the first of 2025, the GDP grew at a rate of between 5% and 6% (annualized and desestationalized). Other private indicators such as the IGA of Orlando Ferreres & Associates They anticipate a significant drop in the level of activity for March, so it is not unreasonable to project a slowdown for the second and third quarter of this year, with the consequent impact on the growth projection. Jorge Vasconceloschief economist of IERALestimates in the last report of Economic news which could be closer to 3.5% annualized from GDP, which would derive “in a partial relief for external accounts (lower import dynamism), but would complicate the continuity of recovery in terms of jobs.”
How to maintain previous dynamism requires additional investment and productivity doses, but warns that relevant sectors In terms of employment as industry and construction, 2017 levels could be reached by 2026 and 2027, growing at a reasonable rate.
Mira inflation. After the flexibility of the exchange rate, it was feared that an eventual trigger of the dollar or the weight of expectations will translate into an inflationary regrowth. However, the consulting firm’s price survey C&T For the GBA region he presented A monthly increase of 2.7% in Aprilsignificantly lower than 3.7% than INDEC relieved for March. This estimate was explained by the slightest increase in education, fruits and vegetables. But core inflation, which leaves regulated and seasonal components such as those indicated, was also going down throughout the month. This moderation leaves a statistical drag for May markedly less than the one left by March for April, since during that month the price acceleration had already begun. Eco Go He already measured that during the first week of this month the food consumed within the home registered a rise of 0.3%, inflation in said area would amount to 2.6% in May and the general level would be 2.3% monthly. Explain that the stabilization of the exchange rate below the center of the band after the leaving of the stocks, the lowest impact of seasonal products such as fruits and vegetables and the decrease in the price of fuel Product of the international fall in the price of oil, they contributed to sustain the Mayor of May.
This combination between prices with a lower dynamic and a level of activity that threatens to slow down projects some uncertainty about the process of updating the peer. The strong suggestion of the government for business chambers not to validate increases of more than 1% (even with older increases). In an election year, salary conflicts promise to flourish if the Subpedite campaign all down at all costs of inflation. But it also happens that this runs for an increasingly smaller portion of the workers.
Unequal. In a recent IDESA investigation, it is shown that, although productive work is key to social progress, in Argentina only 1 in 5 people of active age achieves a “quality employment. It is considered quality employment for formal private employees and professional propistants account. On the other hand, low quality jobs include informal employees, non -professional accounts, social monotributas, domestic service workers, domestic service workers, among others.
According to the Permanent Household Survey (Eph) of the fourth quarter of 2024, the urban population of working age in Argentina is 18 million. Of these, 13 million (73%) integrate the economically active population (PEA): 12 million have employment and 1 million looking for work. The remaining 5 million (27%) are inactive, either due to lack of incentives or by devoting themselves to activities such as the study.
In summary, 1 in 3 Argentines of working age do not. Of the 18.6 million people of working age, only 4 million access quality employment, either as formal private wage earners or professional supporters. This represents only 21% of the total. In the other lift, 6.2 million have low quality work and more than 5 million are directly outside the labor market. The photo is overwhelming and worrying: just 1 out of every 5 adults of working age manages to insert in quality occupations, while the rest faces more precarious forms of labor insertion or directly inactivity.
Between January 2019 and January 2025, the real salary of workers registered in the private sector fell 9%, while that of informal collapsed more than 25%. This fall, which crosses the entire labor market, left most workers with real income at historically low levels, beyond sectoral or labor regime differences under which they are registered.
A key factor is that working age can access productive jobs. However, the Argentine labor market faces three challenges: High inactivity (1 in 3 people do not work), Low quality of employment (only 1 in 3 employed has a registered formal employment) and salaries that tend down (17% fell in the last 6 years). These problems -inactivity, job precariousness and salary inequality- have a common origin: the lack of productive jobs.
Without a doubt, over so many years, which ends up gravitating in the rupture of the virtuous circle of savings channeled to the investment and capitalization of the productive sector, increasing the productivity that, in short, is what determines the level of real wages for each sector. The economist of IDESA Jorge Colina, It indicates that to break that decreasing inertia, more investment must be dump to the most competitive sectors, which implies greater investment in human capital, physical capital and technology. “But for this to happen, in addition to macroeconomic stabilization, collective labor agreements are needed to not expose legal minimum wages above productivity, because then companies in the sector turn to informality, which prevents them from developing and thus always remain in a universe of low productivity”he warns. It is the key to breaking another structure that until now seems immovable: the stratification of the Argentine labor map throughout five decades of instability in very differentiated sectors. They are the ones Agustín Salviadirector of UCA Social Debt Observatoryidentifies how those working in competitive sectors, survivors in low productivity activities and those who are being left over.
