In this sense, in order to move forward, let’s see the picture of the situation at the end of 2021. Employment has been rising, and unemployment has been falling. These data from indec, they are not minors. Employment has risen by 650,000 employed since the end of 2019, and unemployment is at its lowest value since 2015: 7% in the last quarter of 2021, the best record in the last seven years. In addition, there was a growth of 3.5 points in the employment rate, which went from 40% to 43.6%. There are currently 1.5 million unemployed people in the country.
The highest unemployment in relative terms is in Greater Córdoba (10.1%), Mar del Plata (8.4%), Greater Resistance (8.4%), Greater Tucumán, Bahía Blanca and the districts of Greater Buenos Aires ( 8.2%). Informality throughout the country grew after the end of the pandemic, because informal jobs were recovered. This last data is of the utmost importance for a country that comes from 42% of poverty in 2020 (which could drill down 40 points in 2021).
In reference to visible employment (formal, public, private, monotax, domestic staff, etc.), the Ministry of Job in December 2021 it showed 2.4% more employment than in December 2019, surpassing the immense fall of the pandemic. In terms of registered private employment, levels similar to those of December 2019 are already being seen, in the order of 6 million jobs. Formal industrial private employment has already recovered levels of February 2019.
On the consumption side, retail consumption has recovered strongly, especially in tourism. CAME data shows as of February 2022 that SME retail sales at constant prices completed 12 consecutive months on the rise, rising 20.7% annually in February. Also compared to February 2020, before the start of the pandemic, they increased 12.9%. The aggregate consumption data from Indec also shows a margin above 2019.
On the salary and poverty side, the situation begins to tarnish and that is where we now need to look. Inflation indicators in recent months are dramatic. The salary in February 2022 showed the same purchasing power as in December 2019, still affected by the shock of the pandemic and the devaluation that operated between 2018 and 2020 in our country, in the framework of the debt crisis. Poverty, which will decrease in 2021 compared to 2020 due to the pandemic (due to more employment), is possibly being strongly affected by average price variation levels above 6.6% in the total basic basket registered in February.
As we can see, there is heterogeneous growth in these variables. On the one hand, part of the employment and activity has recovered, on the other the levels are very interesting, but finally there is still a lot of salary and pensions left to recover income above the levels of 2015 or (even) 2017, for example. And this gap is not minor, because it is at the core of the government project, which has many difficulties in advancing social improvements that cannot be postponed. It is clear that the main argument to account for the seven plagues of the apocalypse is the price inertia that was generated by the devaluation of 2018 and 2019 in the face of the debt crisis, which was caused by the Macrista government. But that cannot interrupt our explanations or arguments going forward.
The war at the other end of the world hits the prices of energy and food, another black swan, with protectionist closures that make it difficult for value-added products from latitudes like ours, subsumed in peripheral underdevelopment since long ago .
In this context, we want to state that an opportunity also arises: The world is demanding not only more and more energy, and pointing to an energy transition that calls for decarbonization, smart mining, as well as the end of the pandemic and in the context of the war, the demand for industrialized products improves. Then there is an opportunity to incorporate into the formal labor market those thriving forces, eager to contribute to the GDP, and for this an innovative creation of tools is required. We cannot think that two generations of human beings who have fallen from the system should live with no other horizon than just being urban reclaimers (cartoneros), monoblock fumigators or PET recyclers, for example. The challenge is, without underestimating these activities, to promote a jump in the type of employment, consequently improving the routines of entire families that wait for dignity, and thereby promote the activity for the next generations.
This time forces us to go deep again, only by transforming the reality of the most needy will it be successful. What is clear is that this reality is not going to be transformed in isolation from the rest of the productive activities. And there, in that integration, is where the capacity for political action strongly emerges. Broadening the rights base. The reality of our country is immensely heterogeneous. While there are sectors that have good salaries and formal jobs such as hydrocarbons, automotive, and mining, there are others with a high proportion of informality, such as plumbers, masons, electricians, telemarketing, motorcycle couriers, tour guides or domestic staff, among others. several trades, associated with incomes that follow the minimum wage.
Generating social equality will of course have an effect on the income of the informal sectors. All of which requires a stable balance of payments. No one says it’s easy but that’s the challenge. That the most precarious and informal jobs improve, evolve, and grow, to address informality, but also to take a further step in social equality.
There was a time when turners, toolmakers, welders, and carpenters were so important that technical schools produced them in relatively large numbers. Where a YPF opened, where a railway station was set up, a town was born. It seems like a set phrase, but this happened in our country. What is the production that will generate new urbanism, better activity, inclusion and greater productivity for the economy? Is the robotization of factories going to affect a country like ours? In either case, the goal is to even up.
Let us know how to advance from the training of our productive forces, from agreements with unions, the preparation of different social actors, tripartite agreements, the consubstantiality of workers with the search for greater productivity in factories, the implementation of inclusion plans , work and salary, that integrate sectors that are growing, improve local suppliers, as is being done, in relation to those sectors or companies that are at the top of transnational business there is much to be done in order not to have any surprises to future. With the aim of integrating a structural reform, so that our economy can better overcome external bottlenecks, constantly improving the most neglected jobs that have the worst salaries. And thus launch a cycle of self-improvement, improving the opportunities of the entire society.
There cannot be inclusion only thinking about productivity and the technological frontier, which should undoubtedly be a priority, it must be taken into account that without inclusion there is no country, and for this reason construction must be with everyone, and all, with those who have been left behind, the excluded, the outcasts, the dangerous, the forgotten, our internal debt.
Let’s take the treat of this time that we have to live, let’s raise our SMEs with more and more concrete benefits, giving them a greater capacity to take a job. Let’s follow this path of improvement for our companies, which has been taking place in the last two years, after the 25,000 SMEs that died between 2016 and 2019, with record industrial growth but with wages that are delayed, and let’s go to the depth of the issue labor in each of them, giving a twist to the heterogeneity of these years, to achieve a fairer society.
The solution is not to create homogeneity between all the sectors, because each agreement is different and each sector is particular. The solution requires working on the improvement of each agreement to improve the quality of life of workers, and increase the principle of progressivity in each sector. So the work is harder than it may seem intuitively. For example, the tire sector is closely associated with the evolution of the automotive sector. Brigestone, for example, managed to pay a bonus of more than 700,000 pesos (in two installments) thanks to the participation in the profits of the workers. The same could not be done with all companies and workers, perhaps with some, but each case could find a way to turn the screw on its primary internal contradiction.
These SMEs must fundamentally accompany the substitution of imports, make products that we import and can replace, which are current objectives, and which should be the objectives for many years, from injected plastic products to auto parts. Work is being done along these lines, but it requires long-term deepening, State policies, sustaining this course and improving it every day. We saw it with FM (Military Manufactures), with our shipyards (2 ships have just been launched), our military aircraft factory (FMA), State Aeronautical and Mechanical Industries (IAME), etc. That Argentina existed in its splendor, now it must be deepened by attending to the needs of this time, while a future of continuity is disputed.
Not going in depth attending to all these social needs will result in a return to the near past that caused us so much damage. Because structural reforms require very strong changes, a sustainable production structure must be in tune with unions and workers who appropriate it, who coincide with it, otherwise the changes are reversible. Because it has already been shown that the changes are reversible, but that is avoided with concrete facts, and it is Peronism that must honor its three flags as a workers’ movement (political sovereignty, economic independence and social justice). With the law in hand, yes, but without asking permission.
Equanimity in politics does not exist, there are positions, there are disputes and negotiations to start a course. The time is today, so that tomorrow thousands of Argentine men and women do not wake up with the same problems they suffered with the macrismo. It is necessary to pave the way for the principle of progressivity of rights enshrined in our labor law (each agreement must exceed the previous one in terms of benefits for the worker, not only in terms of salary), so that institutionally the productive and labor route, far from being subsumed in flexibilizations, it becomes technologically more complex, resulting in a future social improvement. Only in this way will the productive system be brought closer to a long-term solution.
Source: Ambito
