In the last Survey of Market Expectations (REM) carried out by the Central Bank, the analysts improved their projections for the evolution of activity economic by 2023. A dynamic that, if realized, would allow growth in employment levels to be sustained.
According to REM data, During the third quarter, GDP showed an expansion of 2.3% without seasonalitywhile in 2023 the contraction would be 2%, a perspective that improved by 0.8 pp in relation to the previous survey.
In that scenario, employment is expected to continue its growth path. Although, as analysts warned, it could be “lower quality” jobs, At the same time, the increase in the “independent” sector would be accentuated.
According to data released by the Ministry of Laborbased on data from the SIPA (Argentine Integrated Pension System), in August registered employment presented a monthly variation of 0.3% (35.6 thousand more people) and 4.1% (528.7 thousand workers) compared to the same month of the previous year. Thus, he chained 32 months on the rise.
For September, data from the Labor Indicators Survey (EIL) estimated that the level of registered private employment “remains constant in relation to August”, while in year-on-year terms the “level of registered salaried employment increases 2%”.
When analyzing the evolution of employment and projecting what can be expected for the last part of the year, Tomás Álvarez Kuhnle, economist at Analytica, noted: “The number of workers shows repeated increases. However, its composition worsened. In the second quarter, 48% of workers were in informal relationships, 2.4 percentage points above the 2017 level, denoting a loss in quality that has been sustained since the 2018 crisis.”
“This indicator is especially relevant due to the countercyclical behavior of informality.; That is, in periods of growth a drop in informality is expected and vice versa. By observing what happens inside the registered employmenta loss of quality is also evident as the participation of the Registered private employment falls versus monotributistaswith loss of protection of labor institutions, mainly collective bargaining in inflationary periods,” the analyst explained to Ámbito.
In this framework, when analyzing how it may evolve in the coming months, Alvarez Kuhnle He remarked: “The modality of the labor market seems to be one of expectation and uncertainty. Severe falls are not yet expected, but neither is a recovery, therefore, relationships with contractual flexibility and lower costs are maintained.”.
While Martin Kalosdirector of EPyCA Consultores, noted: “We do not see a problem in employment, but we also do not see an engine for creating formal, registered employment with good salaries.: we see the creation of unregistered and/or precarious employment. Because on the side of formal companies, which can demand employment, we have some recovery in the agricultural sector and the associated services and inputs, but an industry that has little horizon of predictability due to the lack of dollars to import.”
“So, in that scenario, sustaining the level of activity has a lot to do with agriculture, while industry has sectors that are declining. The data does not show it, but the October data will probably begin to show a decline in some industrial sectors. Because in that month the difficulty of accessing dollars to be able to import was greatly exacerbated,” said Kalos, who concluded: “Employment has a chance of being sustained, or of growing slightly, but based on unregistered or precarious employment, with monotax or self-employment, rather than on a dependency relationship.“.
Along the same lines, from the consulting firm LCG they indicated that, “Although job creation continues, the quality of the jobs created is increasingly lower”. “In August49% of registered employment corresponded to monotributist employment or private homes, while only 22% responded to the creation of private salaried positions. The dynamic that has been seen for 10 years is accentuated.”
“For the coming months we hope that the dynamics of lower quality job creation will be sustained which could become even more accentuated to the extent that activity moves downward as we project,” the firm noted.
Meanwhile, the consulting firm Sarandí analyzed what can be expected in terms of employment for 2024 and how it may vary depending on the measures adopted by the new administration: “The rigidities of a very inflexible market and a relative maintenance of the demand for goods and services acted as a containment mesh for jobs, despite the fall in GDP. Today unemployment remains at the lowest levels since 2015. A scenario where restrictions are released quickly and an aggressive tax cut is carried out could lead to a very pronounced economic depression, affecting private employment levels as happened at the beginning. of the century”.
Source: Ambito
