March will be the worst month for the real economy.
The impact of April will not be minor, we will already be accustomed to the news of suspensions, layoffs and voluntary retirement plans along with the drop in production and sales.
The recession is hidden in the summer
with technical and maintenance stops, but now, with the masks fallen, the devaluation and the famous correction of relative prices are exposed.
A survey by the Argentine Industrial Union of seven hundred companies from the main twelve sectors showed in all of them a drop in production that began to affect the level of employment, which until the end of last year had been maintained.
Now, for the UIA, employment fell 21%.
The UOCRA warned of the loss of 50,000 direct jobs, and the UOM, which had already announced 159 layoffs at an automotive plant in Córdoba, is now on the warpath over Acindar, which could affect 7,000 workers.
The company has been analyzing production cuts for months but has not announced any layoffs until now.
-
We all knew that it was going to be very hard and that the impact was going to be felt
- a sector manager
told
Clarín .
We were prepared, but what is happening exceeds our expectations.
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The President explained why the changes in blue are a sign of a slowdown in prices.
But he did not want to set deadlines: "Time belongs to the Creator
Milei thought about these numbers when
he decided on March 1 to buy time until May 25.
Will their good numbers in the polls continue while they have to live with bad numbers in real life?
The President needs to buy time until 2025. Today construction, a typical engine of the economy, is off (INDEC reported a 22% drop in January and February cement shipments were reduced 23.4%) and the automotive sector is another of those that falls the most.
There was an almost total
stoppage
in January and February, and they resumed production with half the shifts and cuts even on the plans drawn up in December.
Volkswagen will only resume production this Monday after a two-month stoppage, and at half last year's level of activity after cutting a shift.
Fiat will cut 17% and Toyota 12%. Tierra del Fuego is also experiencing water: the sale of household appliances fell by 30%, and the textile sector did not escape the depression: Textil Rio Grande had announced in January a suspension process until 3 March and has just expanded it due to lack of raw materials.
Minister Luis Caputo's projections are harsher
than those published by the Fund: the economic team foresees a 4% drop concentrated in the first semester, and the recovery would only arrive in the last quarter of the year.
Meanwhile, they observe an increase in unemployment of between 3 and 4 points.
Salaries “will continue to be flat” for most of the year.
But they do not lose their optimism:
”The economy has something similar to hysteresis, which is a property of metals to return to their previous state.
That applies particularly to salaries;
"They collapse in dollars but they react quickly when the cycle is reversed,"
an official from Caputo's team
explained to
Clarín .