Combination a High inflation With them too High levels of informality, instability and labor instability Has led to a significant increase in interest rates recently People who even have a job are poor. That is, they live in households where there is not enough income to provide basic goods and services to its members.

The rate is alarming: no less 28.2% of workers living in major cities in Argentina suffer from this condition. The data are derived from the results of the Argentina Social Debt Survey of the Social Debt Observatory (ODSA) of the Catholic University of Argentina. The figures obtained from this survey relate to employment and income, and to assess poverty, the values ​​of major consumer baskets, which were periodically reported by the index, were also taken into account.

Index corresponding to 2021. He is the highest in the series, which starts in 2010. 17.6% of employees were poor that year. The situation improved over the next two years, with rates around 11% or 12%, but then the problem worsened. In 2019, the year when the consumer price index rose by 53.4%, 27.2% of workers were poor, a figure that has remained almost the same in 2020. The study covers 5,760 households located in city centers with a population of at least 80,000.

“Due to the reduction in real wages, the index of poor workers has increased dramatically since 2019,” said Augustin Salvia, Director of ODSA in a dialogue with LA NACION.

If we look at the income of employees since 2010, which is measured in constant value in pesos (specifically, in the third quarter of 2021 pesos), we conclude that while in 2010 it averaged $ 65,055, in 2021 it was $ 50,534. . The loss of purchasing power during the period amounted to 22.3%. ი Only since 2017, when the amount was higher than the previous three years, purchasing power has decreased by 18.8%.; That year and 2016 saw an increase in real labor income and since then this figure has been declining in annual periods.

The data also indicates that he is in the segment “Unstable employment” Where the problem of work and poverty is most pressing: 58.2% of those who have a similar profession (which means doing temporary work for low pay, or doing outright odd jobs, or some kind of activity as compensation for a social plan) are in poverty. Of two Employed “Unstable”, The index is 28.2% (they are salaried or self-employed without pension contributions, but with some stability in activity). Neither is a group of people “Full employment” What is registered in the social security system is saved from the fact that part of it is immersed in poverty: in this case, it is 12.6% of the employed.

Salvia confirms that poverty is included in this last segment Low-wage small and medium-sized business workers who have been beaten by inflation from month to month. Lately, there is a formal economy Higher rate of joint signature To mitigate the consequences of rapid price increases. But, the sociologist warns, the wages provided for in these contracts lag behind inflation.

The survey, which was conducted from July to October 2021, does not reflect the part of the competition between prices and wages that takes place during these months. Currently, sent indexes may already be more serious. In April of this year, Argentina had, according to official data from Indec, annual inflation at 58%, the highest in the last three decades.

The exchange between income and inflation, on the other hand, is the dynamic that leads Temporarily alleviate the situation in some homes, but this obviously does not solve the main problem. In addition, when wages rise, Salvia says, except in the case of high-productivity sectors or regulated pricing sectors, employers tend to shift the higher wage value they have to pay to prices. Similarly, by generating more demand for goods and making more money, state aid focused on informal issues seeks to prevent social or political uprisings, the analyst says, but They have no economic logic if what is intended is to penetrate deeply against inflation.

In addition to the constant rise in prices and its consequences, the constant reality of the labor map in Argentina is another factor that is not surprising given that there are poor workers. A UCA study shows that of the economically active population (people over the age of 18 who work or try to do so), only 42.1% have full-time employment, while 29.7% work volatile, 19.2% are sunk in the most volatile employment conditions, and 9.1% are unemployed. In the medium term, the situation has deteriorated: in 2010, among those who had full employment and volatile employment, they accounted for 79.5%, and in 2021, 71.8%. In 2020, in particular, full-time employees took some participation, but In fact, there has been no improvement: statistics have shown this only because quarantine has led to the largest destruction of jobs in the informal segment.

From 2010 to 2021, when the average income of employees with official employment actually fell by 13.3%. Individuals in the micro-informal sector (low productivity segment) decreased significantly: 27.6%.

A phenomenon observed from the results of the ODSA study is that among the informal, there is usually a high level of vulnerability, which means that statistically speaking, they enter quite smoothly and leave the poverty index. Given its design, with the presence of households in the panel of respondents that are repeated from year to year, the sample allows us to see what happens to these levels of entry and exit into poverty. “Nearly 60 percent of deserters have income levels that are very close to the edge,” warns Santiago Poe, co-author of Eduardo Donza. In this percentage case, the amount of income is only one and a half times what would make them poor. “In other words, they are people who leave poverty but do not really have a significant change in their standard of living,” he said.

According to the UCA Observatory, in the second half of 2021, poverty affected 43.8% of the country’s urban population, almost one point less than the previous year (strongly influenced by quarantine). However, the current trend, and analysts estimate, will not be downward. In particular, regarding the participation of full-time employees, Salvia estimated that this year the figure could be lower or, at most, the same. “It may not get worse,” he said, “but if it stays that way, it’s serious.”