How many jobs do the four key sectors of the Argentine economy generate?

Highly competitive sectors generate only 1 in 10 jobs, private reports warn. They are based on observations from the Ministry of Labor that indicated that agriculture, energy, mining and computer services and knowledge generate approximately 10% of employment salaried employee registered in private companies.

This emerges from a report by the Argentine Institute for Social Development (Idea) who stops to analyze that this situation ““It impacts the rest of the economic sectors that find it difficult to produce and create jobs because imports become cheaper.”.

This phenomenon, they analyze, is called “Dutch disease” and refers to a strong appreciation that occurred in the Dutch guilder in the 1960s when a large hydrocarbon reserve was discovered in the North Sea.

It should be noted that the government implemented laundering that produced a massive influx of dollars into the formal circuit of the economy. “There is an expectation that, taking advantage of the benefits provided for in the RIGI, Mining and energy production expands, which will increase exports and avoid imports. Added to this is the very high competitiveness of the agricultural sector,” they expressed from Idea.

In turn, the multilateral exchange rate (that is, the one that considers the currencies of the main countries with which the country trades) already reflects that the dollar “is low in Argentina and it is likely that the phenomenon will deepen in the future.” near future.”

According to the Ministry of Labor, it was observed that: Agriculture, energy, mining, and computer and knowledge services generate approximately 10% of the salaried employment registered in private companies.industry and construction create the 25% of registered salaried employment and commerce and services explain the remaining 65% of registered salaried employment.

“These data show that Sectors with a high capacity to generate foreign currency (agriculture, energy, mining and knowledge industry) generate relatively little employment.: barely 1 in 10 formal salaried jobs. While the rest (industry, construction, commerce and services) explain 9 out of 10 formal jobs,” they highlighted.

Therefore, they conclude that the bulk of urban employment depends on sectors with less competitive capacity and, therefore, the delay in the exchange rate Not only does it reduce production but, most decisively, it has negative impacts on employment.

For this report, “the solution is not to devalue but to accelerate structural reforms.” “With the reforms, more sectors will be able to produce and generate jobs even with a low exchange rate. Eliminating distortive taxes, redesigning labor legislation to avoid excessive conflict and litigation, improving the transportation system and all logistics, promoting regulations that encourage competition and dismantle monopolistic practices, the costs of national production will be lowered“, they highlighted.

In other words, The remedy to confront the “Dutch disease” is not to devalue but to promote structural reforms so that the costs of producing in Argentina fall as much or more than the exchange rate is reduced..