Ismael Bermúdez
08/10/2020 - 12:43
- Clarín.com
- Economy
- Economy
In different but high proportions, layoffs, suspensions, unemployment and reduction of wages are the four adjustment routes that the world of work has been experiencing. Higher data shows that 740,000 workers were suspended, 12% of registered private sector employees. According to private estimates, the unemployment rate would have jumped from 10.4% to 15.5% in one year.
According to the Ministry of Labor, between May 2019 and the same month of 2020, the number of registered workers decreased by 3.4%, which represents 409,000 fewer workers . The fall in total workers was explained by the contraction of private wage earners (-294.6 thousand) and, to a lesser extent, by the reduction of monotax workers (-88.8 thousand) and self-employed (-24.1 thousand ).
Almost three-quarters of this drop occurred due to the pandemic and quarantine. Between March and May of this year, the loss was 302.2 thousand formal jobs, of which 187,000 are private registered salaried positions. The rest corresponds to monotributistas and self-employed employees of private houses. For Labor, had the suspension of dismissals and suspensions and the double severance pay not been approved, the layoffs would have been higher.
For its part, also in May, the wages received by registered dependent workers in private companies show a loss of 4% in the interannual comparison. And they accumulate a 12% decline compared to May 2018.
In addition, in May, according to what was declared by private companies, there were 740,000 salaried workers suspended, 12% of the total, slightly below the 772,000 in April. "In this context , suspensions have functioned as one of the mechanisms for adjusting employment, " says the Report of the Ministry of Labor.
Under these conditions, and "although the labor market of the 2nd Quarter of 2020 registers very particular behaviors that affect the reliability of time comparisons", Agustín Salvia, from the Observatory of Social Debt of the UCA estimates that, as a result of the crisis under the COVID19 context, the unemployment rate had risen from 10.4% in the 1st Quarter of 2020 (EPH-INDEC report) to values close to 15.5% in the 2nd Quarter of 2020 ”.
This means, added Salvia, “an increase in the absolute number of unemployed -projected for a total economically active population at the national level of 19,000,000 people- from 2,220,000 to 3,310,000. That is, an increase of 1,090,000 more unemployed persons , under the assumption of a constant activity rate of 47%. However, it is very possible that the EPH-INDEC survey for the 2nd Quarter of 2020 registers a drop in the activity rate as a result of a situation of “discouragement” in the search for employment ”.
For the most part, these are workers who lost their jobs during the COVID19 crisis (950,000 workers); although also a part of the unemployed would have been new "demographic" entries to the labor market (130 thousand new unemployed). In this estimate, it has been assumed that, at the same time, the same number of assets would have gone into inactivity; although it is possible that this number is even higher if the “discouragement” effect due to lack of job demand is considered.
Salvia estimates “that only a third of these workers who lost their job would have had a formal job as a source of employment, be it salaried, monotax or self-employed (300,000). T he majority of the COVID19 unemployed, more than 650,000 workers, would have been informal workers : non-professional self- employed, temporary workers and unregistered salaried jobs of small and mid-sized enterprises ”.
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