To think about the changes in the country’s economic structure, I share the Employment Expectations Survey (Jan) published by ManpowerGroup, which shows Argentina positioned as the country with the weakest hiring projections in America for the period from April to June 2025.
This study begins to verify something that we have been raising and reflecting on how our economic system is being reconfigured. The country will grow, but growth will be unequal. Development will not be homogeneous.
This aspect will deepen the rupture of a kind of belief or imaginary of homogeneity. The idea of homogeneity was also presented in the Argentine social and cultural structure. The transformation of the productive model opens and complexes the general situation map.
The breakdown of the homogeneity paradigm also has its correlation in social stratification: the threat that seems to check the middle class, of which Argentina felt proud for a long time.
The change. The self -perception of being middle class collapsed in two decades. In 2004, we asked who were perceived by middle class and 94% felt it. The upper class who said they were middle class, did it as shame. In Argentina, there is a kind of generalized perception that, if you are rich, it is not because of the fruit of the laburo, the effort, the ascent or any category associated with the middle class. Rico is synonymous with trout.
Argentina is one of the countries where wealth has never had a possibility of expressing itself as a positive value. If you are rich, people generally believe it is because you screwed up, because you are political and coimeás or because you are narco. And in facts, it is often verified. They are the three declines that can explain the wealth.
And those of lower class that were perceived middle class expressed the feeling the “possibility” of social ascent; Feel a possible advance and that all together would arrive. In the neighborhood they grew with small differences all together. In the apple it was noted that in some years almost all or much of them ascended.
The middle class and its ability to absorb or belong is remarkable. “We are all middle class” is an idea that for a long time turned in the collective unconscious. In addition, being middle class is what is fine. Because it is the result of effort, but not be poor or rich.
In 20 years, almost half of the country stopped feeling middle class. Today 46% is perceived middle class. That is, in two decades the middle class perception fell from 94% to 46%. Because? Here we enter the field of the imaginary and culture, to think how to move if it no longer operates as before that wide and paved avenue of the middle of name: the middle class.
Of the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. At this point it is convenient to observe the macro with a microscopic perspective. The middle class is the one that defines the identity of the “Argentine being.” Within the middle class we can observe two very notorious groups with two dominant modes.
A high middle class that values wealth, which speaks of wealth and that begins to hold wealth. They want the first world, here and now!
A low middle class that is having a very bad time, which is clear to grow in growing and observes the possibility of promotion with gigantic impediments. Access to housing is an impossible dream. The idea of getting fast and easy money would seem to be the only way to access wealth. The inability to save makes its great contribution to the construction of these senses. Timba online is presented as a savior road. What can save you is a stroke of luck. There is a dispute between the common progress and the individual of success.
Strata. If we refer to the extremes, upper class, C3 and D1: What are your expressive features in times of transformation? In cultural terms, habits and tastes this subgroup, C3, has new codes and forms as a consequence or for its link with new technologies, pandemic, economy and politics.
The aesthetics of this group is the conjugation of the traditional values of the middle class, but without the aspiring thrust and without a handle.
This hybrid, of new configurations, values and aesthetic can also challenge the upper class. There are modes that before were restricted to the lower class that begin to be mainstream. It goes from the bottom up, towards an illogical direction, but verifiable.
Catalyst. The low middle class will determine the social climate. Argentina always had a homogeneous middle class imaginary that represents the Argentine being and is what forms or determines what we call the “social mood”Today, this imaginary is cracked not broken. And this question for being Argentine is mutating. The low middle class will dominate the social climate.
Politics, art and market are immersed in the problem of being able to achieve or connect with more people. The lack of closeness that is lived between institutions, brands, political class, etc. And people are getting more deep.
Before, with the same message you reached a vast majority, 94%, and today that same communication would be reaching just less than half of the population. All this with a society that, as such, is totally segmented and divided.
It is a time of dispute, they are at stake and for establishing new values and codes, but there are already clues to travel and think how changes in economic, social and cultural structure in Argentina are being constituted.
* Fernando Moiguer is CEO of Moiguer strategy consultant.
By Fernando Moiguer
