After a losing close in December 2023, at the beginning of 2024
salaries began to decline compared to inflation
. In January, they grew 16.4% less than the monthly inflation of 20.6%.
A drop of 3.5%.
But not all sectors suffered the same fate. While
the salaries of the registered private sector rose 20% and almost tied the prices
as a result of parities that are being updated month by month, the salaries of public employees rose only 12.1% and those of private employees not yet registered less: 11.2%.
Thus, private salaries registered a monthly drop of 0.5%, “In this way, in the last nineteen months, in seventeen of them, the interannual variation in salaries was below inflation,” says the consulting firm ACM.
The public sector had a drop in real terms of 7%
"In this way, after eleven consecutive months of receiving higher real salaries year-on-year, negative results were observed in the last three months of analysis." And in real terms, the purchasing power of the
unregistered private sector suffered a drop of 7.8%,
once again having the worst evolution versus inflation.
Compared to a year ago (January 2023), inflation was 254.2% and salaries rose 181%, a loss of 20.7%. Consequently, the fall in wages, according to the different segments, was as follows: the public sector lost 24.3%; the registered private sector, 13.9% and the unregistered private sector, 36.7%, again the hardest hit segment.
ACM Consulting also considers the evolution of real wages in comparison with
food inflation
, one of the main components of consumer spending.
It says that “when examining the recorded salaries adjusted for food inflation, which in the month of analysis reached 296.5% year-on-year, a much less favorable performance is evident. Specifically, the real salary of the registered private sector measured by the CPI shows a drop of 14%, while when compared to specific food inflation, a drop of 23.1% is observed year-on-year. This allows us to more clearly visualize the
impact that food inflation is having on salaries
,” adds ACM.
From these data it is inferred that poverty levels worsened in January, even more so because retirees and pensioners earned the same as in December.
NE