In the last two decades the Argentina consolidated the phenomenon of the “working poor”where having a job does not guarantee escape from that categoryaccording to a Catholic University report(UCA).
of the extensive report who made the Argentine Social Debt Observatory of the ACU for the period to come from 2003 to 2022there are some preliminary indications such as that the half of the working urban population faced some type of problem related to the quality of their labor insertion in the first decades of this century.
Also, the purchasing power of formal workers was seen highly deteriorated given that fell by more than 20 points the actual salary. For the “poor workers” the situation was worse: in monthly terms, earn about 30% less than the average employed labor force.
The data from the UCA report
The document, titled “20 years after the end of the convertibility crisis: two decades of labor segmentation, deterioration of occupations and poverty in urban Argentina”warns that employment in the secondary or unregulated segment became the main problemaffecting almost a quarter of the active workforce in Argentina.
After the initial recovery (2003-2007) he unemployment remained near or below two digits. In 2020 (14.6%) this situation got worsebut fell again with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unemploymentyes ok has been declining in recent years (from 16% in 2003 to 7.5% in 2022), becomes replaced by an increase in the marginal worker segment that went to 16.7% in the last year and the informal sectorwhich is in the order of 74% in Argentina.
“The sectoral distribution of employment was stable throughout the entire period. Almost 4 out of 10 employed were linked to the urban informal sectorin salaried modalities or by independent work”, reveals the report.
Furthermore, the incidence of precarious segment of employment remained strongly associated with informal sector activitieswhere 7 out of 10 employed were in a precarious employment situation or in a job with indigence income.
Consolidation of the “working poor”
What you see after the 2018 crisis and then deepens due to the pandemic is the consolidation of the phenomenon of the working poorsays the study.
The definition of poor worker make reference to employed people living in places with income below the poverty line. Thus, levels that exceed 20% are passed until reaching 29% of working poverty.
All this is explained by the salary dynamics for the inflation impact that caused the wages of formal and informal workers to fall by more than 20 points.
Inefficiency of social plans
Another phenomenon is also seen, which is the inefficiency of social assistance transfer systems to avoid poverty among workers.
The informal sector workers with bad working conditions they have much more chances of being poor.
He increase in work in marginal jobs and job insecurity in unregulated employment It marks a structural situation in Argentina where there is no job stability and with low wages, due to their few productive capacities and low educational level.
These types of workers are mostly beneficiaries of social programs and this combination marks a downward trend in terms of poverty in an inflationary context.
Source: Ambito
