A private report reveals that the Argentine labour market no longer expels workers, but retains them in increasingly precarious jobs. The unemployment rate, seemingly low, hides a deep deterioration in working conditions.
The unemployment rate has ceased to be a reliable indicator of the health of the Argentine labour market. This is warned by a report from the Observatorio de la Deuda Social Argentina of UCA (ODSA-UCA), which points out that current crises no longer massively expel workers, but keep them occupied in increasingly precarious, poorly paid, and unstable jobs. This phenomenon, termed regressive labour absorption, conceals the deterioration behind a relatively low unemployment rate.
Precarious Employment as a Refuge Against the Lack of Formal Work
The report's diagnosis is blunt: movements within the labour market reflect strategies of refuge in the face of insufficient formal jobs. According to the study, more than 24,000 companies have closed and over 200,000 formal jobs have been lost in recent years. However, the unemployment rate remains stable because many workers find alternative means of subsistence in informal occupations, odd jobs, or work on digital platforms.
“Movements within the labour market mainly reflect strategies of refuge in the face of insufficient formal jobs,” the researchers warn. This implies that the labour market does not massively expel people, but it also fails to fully integrate them. A more fragmented labour structure is consolidating, where a significant portion of employment is created under more precarious conditions and with lower incomes.
“The problem is not only how many people have jobs, but what kind of jobs they get,” the report states.
The Milei Government and the Paradox of Low Unemployment
The government of Javier Milei showcases the relative stability in the unemployment rate as a success. However, the ODSA-UCA report warns that the deterioration is no longer occurring outside the labour market, but within employment itself. The data shows that the labour market has stopped expelling people and has begun to absorb them into increasingly precarious occupations, a transformation that makes unemployment alone insufficient to measure the current social deterioration.
In Argentina in recent years, and with greater intensity since the arrival of the libertarian administration, productive and labour changes have altered the way crises impact the world of work. Those who lose a registered job do not necessarily swell the unemployment statistics, but often find some alternative to generate income, albeit under more precarious conditions and with lower levels of protection.
For the researchers, “the problem is not only low economic growth but the difficulty in transforming that growth into productive and protected employment.” This phenomenon helps to explain one of the main paradoxes of the Argentine labour market: the economy has managed to maintain low levels of unemployment without consolidating an equivalent expansion of formal, productive, and protected employment.
A More Fragmented Labour Structure with Fewer Rights
The absorption of labour has shifted towards sectors and modalities of insertion with lower productivity and regulation, while income and quality gaps have persisted. The ODSA-UCA report indicates that the deterioration has ceased to be primarily expressed in the lack of work and has begun to hide within employment itself. This implies that, although the unemployment rate remains low, the quality of employment is worsening.
Informal workers, subsistence self-employed individuals, and those engaged in low-income activities are the most affected. According to the study, the Argentine labour market is undergoing a process of regressive labour absorption, which, far from expanding registered and quality employment, incorporates workers through informal, unregistered occupations, with fewer rights and higher levels of instability.
In this context, the researchers warn that “a more fragmented labour structure is consolidating, where a significant portion of employment is created under more precarious conditions and with lower incomes.” Precarity has become the new face of the labour crisis, and unemployment is no longer the only indicator for measuring workers' well-being.
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