Due to the increased activity and the increase in employment, above all due to the very high level reached by wage earners without “retirement discount”, in the third quarter of this year the unemployment rate fell from 8.2% to 7, 1% compared to the same period in 2021, but increased from 6.9% in the second quarter of this year according to data from the INDEC’s Permanent Survey of Households (EPH).
With these numbers, and projected for the entire country (including the rural population), the unemployed are just over 1.5 million: 300,000 fewer people than 12 months ago.
A third of the unemployed (550,000) live in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Although unemployment in that region fell in one year from 9.5% to 9.1%, the districts of Greater Buenos Aires began to have the highest unemployment among the 31 agglomerations measured by the official body.
In the city of Buenos Aires, unemployment is 4.7% (about 75,000 unemployed).
The level of employment – it went from 42.9% to 44.2% – and the same happened with the activity rate which went from 46.7% to 47.6% on an annual basis.
In the suburbs of Buenos Aires more people left to look for work, the number of employed people grew from 5,257,000 in the third quarter of 2021 to 5,486,000 and the unemployed remained almost at the same level as they went from 552,000 to 550,000. Of the employed, 708,000 are underemployed.
Meanwhile, “within the universe of salaried employees, the share of those who do not benefit from the pension discount increased by 4.3 points (from 33.1% to 37.4%). On the other hand, those who said the discount showed a drop of the same amount, with a participation of 62.6% (against 66.9% in the previous year)”, reads the official report. There are 5.6 million informal wage earners,
This means that the improvement in the employment rate has been driven by undeclared work, both salaried and self-employed, the two sectors most affected by the pandemic and the quarantine, with the novelty now exceeding 2016-2019 levels.
The increase in the activity rate (from 46.7% to 47.6%) means that more people have gone looking for work to bolster household income in response to skyrocketing inflation and falling real individual wages.
Underemployment is also decreasing: in one year it went from 12.2% to 11%.
The INDEC report also highlights that:
* With regard to the type of establishment, it is noted that private employment increased its incidence by 1.5 points (from 79% to 80.5%), to the detriment of public employment, which decreased its participation by the same proportion and went from 19.3% to 17.9%.
* The unemployment rate is broken down into 7.8% for women and 6.5% for men.
* By age, women aged between 14 and 29 stand out with an unemployment rate of 16.6% and men of that age with 14.3%
* By region, the highest unemployment rate, with 8.2%, stood out in the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires and with the lowest unemployment rate in the Northeast (3.8%).
* Based on the educational attainment of the unemployed, 72.6% completed secondary school and 27.4% completed or did not complete high school and university.
* The pressure on the labor market of jobseekers – made up of the available universe of unemployed, underemployed, employed applicants and employed non-applicants – reached 29.3% of the EAP. There are more than 6 million people.
Source: Clarin
