According to data from INDEC, corresponding to the period July-September of last year, the Remuneration for Salaried Work (RTA) represented 43.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)when in the same period of 2023 it was 44.7% and in the immediately previous quarter it was 43.5%. The RTA contemplates two components: a) salaries and wages to be paid in money or in kind and b) social contributions to be paid by employers.
In dialogue with Ámbito, the economist Juan Graña He also highlighted that the data is much lower than the peak of 53% reached in 2015although in historical terms it is not that low. “The fall shows that the costs of the stabilization program were borne by the workers who were able to appropriate a smaller portion of the income,” he elaborated on the matter.
It is worth clarifying, however, that The year-on-year drop responded fundamentally to what happened in the public sectorsince in the private sector there was a slight improvement.
Workers, victims of unemployment, precariousness and loss of wages
The decline occurred in a context of growing unemployment and precariousness of the labor market. According to the aforementioned report, titled “Income generation and labor input account”, while registered salaried jobs fell 2% year-on-year, informal salaried jobs increased 1.4% and non-salaried jobs (which includes to monotributistas) grew by 1.8%.
The areas that lost the most job sources were: Manufacturing industry (-4.2%), Construction (-3.7%) and Commerce (-3.2%)the three activities with the most weight in the GDP and closely linked to the domestic market.
In terms of salaries, data from the Argentine Integrated Pension System (SIPA) indicated that, after a sharp collapse in the purchasing power of formal workers in the private sector between December 2023 and March 2024, as of April a decrease began to be observed. rebound, which seemed to find a brake in August. In September the salaries of this segment, the most stable and with the greatest labor rights, were 2.4% below the level prior to the arrival of Javier Milei to Casa Rosada.
The income of public employees and informal workers lagged much further behind.. For the former, INDEC recorded a real drop of 16.1% in the first ten months of the Milei era.
The weight of the Mixed Gross Income grew: precariousness or structural change in the labor market?
Meanwhile, the Gross Operating Surplus (EBE)which broadly explains the portion of national income appropriated by capital, represented 44.5% of GDP, measured as Gross Value Added (GVA). It is worth noting that this data corresponds to companies incorporated as a company and the INDEC obtains it once the remuneration of employees and taxes (net of subsidies) on production are deducted from the GVA.
13.9% of the income was captured by the Mixed Gross Income (IBM)which is the accounting balance of unincorporated businesses owned by households whose owners or members provide unpaid labor of a type similar to that which paid workers could provide. The INDEC explains that it receives this name “since it implicitly contains an element of remuneration for the work performed by the owner or by other members of the household that cannot be identified separately from the performance obtained by the owner as an entrepreneur.”
While the EBE showed a slight decrease of 0.14 percentage points, the IBM showed an increase of 0.56 points. Regarding this increase, Graña maintained that “in the context of the crisis we are in, it reflects more of a process of precariousness than anything else,” such as a structural change in the labor market.
Source: Ambito
