Employment registered in the Construction industry fell again in April, for the eighth consecutive month, and has already accumulated a loss of 90,000 jobs since last Augustas revealed this Thursday by the situation report of the IERIC (Institute of Statistics and Registration of the Construction Industry).
This industry, one of the hardest hit since Javier Milei’s government took office, due to a strong cut in public works, reached a total of 355,618 jobs.
In April, 4,000 jobs were lost, exhibiting a more moderate intensity than in the first 2 months of the year, but higher than that of March, IERIC said.
The drop in the number of registered positions It was the third largest for a month of April in the entire historical series, only surpassed in 2020 by the pandemic and in 2012 with a slightly greater loss.
After recording a historic high for sectoral employment in April 2023, Employment in the Construction Industry is at very low levels, barely exceeding that of the months of April 2020 and 2021.
The year-on-year comparison was in negative territory for the sixth consecutive month, with an acceleration in the pace of contraction that reached 19.9% in April, after 15.9% in February and 19.4% in March.
The average employment indicator in April stood at 13.4 jobs per construction firmmarking a drop of 0.9% monthly and 15.8% year-on-year, which indicates a greater decrease in the number of workers than in the number of companies in the sector.
The large construction firms were the ones that suffered the most from the fall in employment in April, especially those with 500 or more workers, which reduced their workforce by 8.3% monthly, well above the total for the sector (-1.1%).
The contractionary dynamics of sectoral employment throughout the national territory has been generalized, but unlike the month of March when Only the province of Neuquén registered monthly growth, in April there were 5 in that condition.
Construction employment: region by region
The regions of NOA, AMBA and NEA appear to have stabilized their occupancy levels, with monthly variations of -0.6% and -0.3% for the first two, respectively, and becoming positive (0.3%) for Northeast Argentina.
In the Patagonia Region, the volume of employment marked a monthly contraction of 4.4%mainly affected by what happened in the Province of Santa Cruz that with an atypical contraction of the 41.1% monthly accounted for just over a third of the gross job losses nationwide in April.
In the year-on-year comparison, Salta was the only province that showed an increase in formal employment (6.2%) compared to April 2023. In contrast, Formosa has been the province with the worst relative performance since June 2023 (-64.8%), followed by Chaco (-63.4%) and San Luis (-58.2%).
Construction: what happened to employers in May
IERIC data indicate that in May 2024 saw a 10.6% year-on-year drop in the number of employers active in the Construction Industrywith a marked deceleration compared to the rate of decline in April but higher than that of January (-0.7%), February (-2.3%) and March (-8.3%).
With a total of 16,305 employers in activity during the month, it is ranked in levels similar to those of May 2007 and only above the records for May 2009 and 2010.
The Large jurisdictions had a less unfavorable performance (-9.6% year-on-year) compared to that of the Remaining jurisdictions (-12.5%). Only the province of San Juan was able to escape the contractionary trend, with an increase in the number of active employers of 4.5% in the last year.
Source: Ambito
