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Unemployment: they estimate that it rose at the end of 2023 and warn about the impact of the recession on jobs - Infobae
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Desempleo: estiman que subió en el cierre de 2023 y advierten sobre el impacto de la recesión en los puestos de trabajo
Este miércoles el Indec publicará el índice de desocupación del cuarto trimestre del año pasado, que rondaría el 7 por ciento. Alerta por empleos en la construcción y en la administración pública
www.infobae.com
March 19, 2024
This Wednesday, Indec will publish the unemployment rate for the fourth quarter of last year, which would be around 7 percent. Alert for jobs in construction and public administration
By Mariano Boettner
Workers of an automotive company during their workday, at the plant in the city of Zarate, in the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina), in a file photograph. EFE/ Juan Ignacio Roncoroni
Unemployment rose at the end of 2023 according to private and official estimates, the impact of the deep recession in the first months of this year threatens to make these indicators worse. This Wednesday, Indec will release the official unemployment rate for the fourth quarter of last year.
The last known official data had been that of the third quarter of 2023, when unemployment was 5.7 percent . Preliminary information on the state of the labor market usually comes from the Ministry of Labor, but this month that ministry, which underwent a change of authorities with the departure of Omar Yasin and the arrival of Julio Cordero, interrupted the publication of its two monthly reports.
For this reason, the scope of the SIPA (Argentine Integrated Pension System) report, which is the most representative, has data only until November, a five-month delay . Another report, with a more limited extension since it only includes companies with more than 10 employees in some Argentine cities, is that of the Labor Indicators Survey (EIL), which did reach until December before the normal publication calendar was interrupted. of labor statistics.
That report resulted in a slight contraction in the occupancy level. “The level of private employment registered in companies (with more than 10 employed people) of the total urban agglomerations surveyed presented a reduction of 0.5% in relation to the month of November. This fall is fundamentally due to the reduction in employment for seasonal reasons in Construction,” he explained.
“Excluding this sector temporarily affected by seasonality, the level of private registered employment presented a slight contraction of 0.1% in relation to the previous month. In year-on-year terms, the level of registered salaried employment increased by 1.1% ,” stated the Ministry of Labor.
Julio Cordero was chosen to replace Omar Yasin in the position of Secretary of Labor
The exclusion of construction from the calculation of the general index was based, in the official report, on the fact that “due to the inherent characteristics of the sector, the level of registered employment contracts temporarily in the months of December of each year. This phenomenon is due to the fact that a significant number of Construction workers leave their jobs at the end of December to be rehired in January, with the purpose of receiving the severance fund that the activity has.
Beyond this particularity, construction is one of the sectors in which it is expected that there will be an impact on labor indicators due to the slowdown in public works. According to an Indec report, in December 2023 there were 432,729 jobs in the sector, a 3.2% drop compared to the same month of the previous year.
“As for the rest of the activity sectors, a markedly heterogeneous labor dynamic is observed: the sectors of Commerce, restaurants and hotels and Transportation, storage and communications increased their employment levels between 0.4% and 0.5% , respectively. , while Industry presented a monthly drop of 0.5% . The rest of the productive sectors did not present significant variations in employment,” concluded the labor portfolio.
The forecast of private consultants indicates that unemployment will show, in the report that Indec will release this Wednesday, an increase compared to the previous quarter and the same quarter of the previous year. “We expect an increase in unemployment in the quarter, affected by the significant drop in activity in the same period,” mentioned an LCG report.
“Based on EMAE data, activity contracted an average of 1.9% compared to the previous quarter, but with an accumulated decrease of 3.2% seasonally adjusted in the last two months. This implies less creation and some loss of employment. The registered jobs that were growing at significant rates began to show a certain decline in growth since the middle of the year, anticipating what could happen in the general labor market,” they considered from that consulting firm.
“In parallel, in an inflationary context that leads to a fall in purchasing power, the labor supply (PEA) could have increased due to the need to supplement household income. Therefore, we expect an unemployment rate close to 7% , 1.3 percentage points more than the previous quarter and 0.7 percentage points more than a year ago ,” they concluded.
Private estimates believe that this year due to the strong recession there will be an increase in the unemployment rate. AP Photo
Since the first month of President Javier Milei 's government , another sector that experienced a contraction in its labor indicators is public administration. As reported by Infobae , among the workers in an agreement, where the number of workers went from 276,896 in November to 231,176 in December, according to data from the statistical agency.
The warning given in the private sector is that the recession will have an impact on unemployment rates. “As far as 2024 is concerned, we consider that several fronts will affect the labor market. Firstly, the sharp loss of purchasing power , especially in the first months of the year, will lead to an increase in participation in the labor market: more people will look for a job to shore up eroded family income,” Ecolatina stated.
“At the same time, the strong recession will surely lead to loss of formal employment in some sectors, especially those most dependent on internal demand - among which would be construction, as a result of a growing cost in dollars and the eventual paralysis in public works. -. Furthermore, the outlook could be complicated in those productive sectors that depend to a greater degree on protection, which could suffer more as a consequence of a trade opening,” he mentioned in a report during the first weeks of the Milei government.
“However, this new potential mass of unemployed will not necessarily imply a substantial increase in unemployment . Even in a critical scenario, it is expected that part of the loss of formal employment will migrate towards informal and self-employed jobs, characterized by being of lower quality. This change, although not desirable, may be a factor that contains the increase in unemployment, which would rise to the 8% area ,” the consultancy firm estimated at that time.
As a comparison, the International Monetary Fund also made its own calculation on how Argentine unemployment will vary in the first year of the libertarian mandate in the midst of an economic program that will imply a strong impact on economic activity in these first months. The IMF technical staff also agreed that the final unemployment number in 2024 will be 8% but from the 6.6% that it would end in 2023, that is, almost a point and a half percentage increase in that indicator.
