The increase in the impoverishment of the workforce is the most relevant data that emerges from the microdata of the EPH (Permanent Household Survey) for the fourth quarter of 2022 that INDEC released on Friday.
Over the past year,
poverty among employed people rose from 25.8% to 30.5%,
exceeding the pre-pandemic level.
There are more than
5.5 million urban formal or informal workers
nationwide who live in poor households.
There are almost a million more poor employed people in just one year.
This labor reality dragged down families and
child poverty
(under 14 years of age) jumped
from 51.1% to 56.5%,
with an increase among those over 65 years of age from 13.1% to 16.9%. .
In relation to the total population (urban and rural) the poor totaled almost 19 million at the end of last year.
The poverty index reaches 40.9% against 36.5% at the end of 2021
, although it is estimated that these figures should now be higher due to the skyrocketing inflation and especially the values of basic baskets, especially the food
Several factors coincide in this reality of generalized impoverishment of workers:
Rising inflation
, the
loss of purchasing power
that began in 2018 and has now gone uninterrupted for five years without being reversed, lower
labor costs
, whether due to precariousness, employment informal or through agreements that close below inflation, among other reasons.
Also the
increase in food prices
, which hits the lower income sectors above all.
This increase in poverty occurred with more activity, more employed people
(unemployment fell) and in all work modalities, although in proportion, it rose more among registered wage earners, with a retirement discount, where
one in every 5 registered workers has income from below the poverty line
.
There are just over half a million registered workers living in poor households compared to a year ago.
In short, with growth, with fewer unemployed and more employed,
a greater proportion of households or families ended 2022 poorer
.
A sort of
“growing” pauperization.
“Within employed workers, there was a year-on-year increase of almost 6 percentage points in the number of formal wage earners (with a retirement discount) living in poor households, going from 13.6% in 2021 to 19.3% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Given that the economy's formal employment rate remained relatively stable between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2022, these results reflect the
marked deterioration in the real income of formal workers
”, says Martin González-Rozada Director of the Master's Degree in Econometrics from Torcuato Di Tella University.
Rozada adds that “the situation of wage earners without a retirement discount is worse.
There were 45.2% of informal wage earners living in poor households at the end of 2022 versus 43.2% a year earlier.
Among the self-employed, it rose from 36.3% to 40.1%.
In short, after the 2021 rebound after the pandemic and quarantine, and
with a rise in economic activity of 5.2% in 2022, poverty rose from 36.5% to 40.9% in one year.
From all these data it can be deduced that the greatest economic activity was based on the different forms of labor precariousness (full informality, hiring employees as Monotributistas (“factureros”) and on the impoverishment of the labor force due to the drop in real wages in
between of an inflation that bordered 100%.
This process has accumulated several years, under the previous and the current government.
According to the LCG consultancy,
real wages are 24.9% lower than in November 2017
(last peak).
"While registered workers show a drop in purchasing power of 20.8% compared to this last mentioned period, informal workers are the most affected with a loss that almost doubles, reaching 41%."
Due to this collapse in real wages, from the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2019, there was an unprecedented jump in those who have jobs and are poor.
They increased from 17.3% to 24.5% of the employed population during 2018 to rise again to 27.5% in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Thus, with an economy that exceeded activity levels prior to the pandemic, in-work poverty is higher (30.5%).
And that of registered workers went from 14.5% to 19.3%.
This
impoverishment with growth
and lower unemployment led to a loss of the participation of all workers in the economic wealth generated, says CIFRA (Research and Training Center of the Argentine Republic).
“A first decrease in this sense occurred during the Cambiemos government, when total remunerations fell from 51.8% of total Value Added in 2016 to 46.3% in 2019, as a result of a real drop in wages greater than the decrease in the level of economic activity between those years.
Once 2020 was over, with the post-pandemic economic recovery, there was once again a process of loss of participation in wages, which in 2022 stood at 44.9% of Value Added”.