Job insecurity, the rise of informal employment, the decline in real wages and the limited effects of official employment policies have led employed workers to live in poor families they went from 11.5% in 2012 to 32.5% in 2023, according to the UCA Social Debt Observatory. (Catholic University of Argentina). It is estimated that this percentage would have increased in this first quarter of 2024 due to the soaring prices of poverty and poverty baskets in relation to workers’ income.
Out of a total of 20 million formal and informal employees, there would be 6.5 million workers with jobs registered or not registered with Social Security living in poverty. From this it follows that having a formal or informal job is not enough to not be poor or for the family or home to be poor.
From the Observatory series it emerges that after the collapse of convertibility starting from 2004 (start of series), the employed poor workers fell from 37.8% to 11.5% in 2012. Since that year they have increased to 18, 1% in 2016, they dropped to 15.5% in 2017 and from that year onwards they increased significantly in 2018 and 2019 (27.8%, end of Mauricio Macri’s government), to make a leap in the last 2 years of Alberto Fernández’s government up to 32.5%.
32.5% is divided as follows:
- In the formal private sector it reaches 18.7%.
- In the public sector 17.8% of workers
- 4.9% of self-employed workers in the formal private sector.
- 44.2% of self-employed workers work in the micro-informal sector
- 78% of recipients of employment programs,
The UCA Report indicates that “the percentage of workers residing in families in poverty decreased significantly between 2004 and 2012 , both for job creation and for the expansion of employment programs and welfare programs. On the contrary, in the period 2012-2023, despite short years of prosperity, an increase in the percentage of employed people in poverty is observed. Culminating, in 2023, with 32.5% of employed people in this situation”.
The Report also highlights that 33.1% of employed women and 31.9% of employed men resided in poor families.
Depending on sectors and employment status, in the public sector, the formal paid sector and the formal unpaid sector, women suffer from a lower level of poverty incidence than men.
This relationship is reversed in the paid micro-informal sector and the difference between those employed in the unpaid micro-informal sector and between the recipients of employment programs almost disappears.
By age, 33.7% of employed young people, 33.8% of employed adults and 21.5% of employed elderly people They were poverty stricken.
Source: Clarin
