Formal salaries, with contributions to Social Security, started the year with a heavy loss compared to inflation: they increased by 3.8% against an average price increase of 6%.
Thus, in January, in the last 12 months, the price increase was 98.8% and formal wages increased by 87.76%. A loss of 5.5%.
The salary figure is official and corresponds to the RIPTE (Taxable Salary for Stable Workers), whose monthly series begins in July 1994.
The RIPTE is calculated on the basis of average pay subject to contributions to the Argentine Integrated Pension System (SIPA) received by employees and declared continuously for the last 13 months.
For this and other reasons, the Ministry of Labor believes that “the RIPTE does not necessarily reflect the evolution of recorded labor wages” because it does not include, for example, non-remunerative increasesremuneration of new jobs is excluded, considers the wages of private sector and national, provincial and municipal public sector jobs that have transferred their pension funds to the national system and takes into account the amount of wages up to taxable defined ceiling of personal contributions to the social security system.
However, with these clarifications and in the absence of an official index which covers all registered salaries, the RIPTE is an indicator which makes it possible to analyze the evolution of the mass or the majority of formal salaries.
In January gross wages (without deductions) taxable with contributions an average of $201,580.26 according to official data on the basis of the amounts declared by companies to the Social Security. A year ago, it was $107,358.35.
Since it is the gross salary, to determine out-of-pocket income, at $201,580.26 the worker’s retirement and health care contribution (17%) would need to be discounted and finally add the family wage per child.
In the last 5 yearsformal wages (RIPTE) had a 20% loss against inflation.
In total, employees with contributions to ANSeS amount to approximately 7.5 million 75% of the nearly 10 million employees in a registered dependency ratio. The remainder contributes to provincial savings banks or other schemes.
These 10 million, in turn, represent half of all formal and informal jobs of the country (single-tax payers, self-employed workers, wage earners without pension discounts and informal self-employed workers).
As a salary index, the RIPTE is used every three months (March, June, September, December) to fix half the mobility percentage of the retirements, pensions and other social benefits and in the calculation of allowance due to work injuries.
It is also used to update the file once a year Minimum non-taxable income tax and to update the “minimum” wage, initially to $150,000 and now to $404,062 to be exempt from paying this tax, and from this month to the family income ceiling to collect child benefits. That plan is obsolete again and more workers are affected by that tax. And every month the share that employers pay into the Sickness Fund for COVID insurance increases.
Source: Clarin
