The study shows an alarming 32.4% increase in unemployment between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024
By the end of 2023, 34.9% of workers under the line of the povertyand this indicator remains on the rise due to the increase in the total basic basket.
According to research published by the RA Center of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, based on data provided by INDEC for the first quarter of 2024, there is currently a growing record of people who have jobs but are poor since their family income is not enough to cover a basket of basic goods and services.
This is a phenomenon that has increased in recent years and has increased significantly in the last six months. If we take 2017 as a comparison, the average income of employed people fell by almost 40%, 14% of which occurred during the last six months. The relationship between employment and income reveals that in today’s Argentina, work does not mean the immediate improvement of people’s material conditions. Today, getting a job is not a task that can be done without a job. Employment does not mean stopping being poor.
Unemployment rate is growing
The level of employment is at similar levels to when the pandemic ended (third quarter of 2021). Correlatively, the unemployment rate is unemployment is growing proportionally more than the decline in the employment and activity rate. The report adds that there are currently 265,950 new unemployed in Argentina. In addition, it shows that the 32.4% growth in unemployment between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 is alarming, which in numbers means that there are 1,088,000 unemployed. The relationship of the employment rate is inversely proportional to the unemployment rate. unemploymentWhile the first is falling, the second tends to increase.
The latest measurement warns that 404,000 people stopped being employed, which corresponds to a decrease of 3 points between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. This is directly related to the 265,000 new unemployed. The remaining 139,000 became underemployed job seekers. This means that they are people who involuntarily work less than 35 hours a week and are still looking for a new job. The unemployed group is made up of all those people who, without having a job, are available for work and have actively sought employment in a given reference period.
The sectors where most jobs were lost
The work concludes that to understand the fall in employment and its impact on income levels, attention must be paid to the branches where the greatest declines were recorded. The construction sector accounts for 42.7% of the jobs lost. This sector has high rates of precariousness and informality. Among the causes that explain the fall in this sector in particular is the paralysis of public works. The productive sectors that follow in terms of the number of lost jobs are commerce and financial and real estate services, which are directly related to the consumption capacity and purchasing power of the middle and working classes.
Source: Ambito
