The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec) released the survey of the labor market for the first quarter of 2022. Argentina achieved the lowest unemployment since 2016 and showed a strong advance –of 3.5%– in the unemployment rate jobwhich grew from 40.1% a 43.6%. However, it was also observed that young people under 29 years of age are the most affected in the unemployment rate.
According to the report released this Thursday, the unemployment rate (TD) – people who do not have a job, are available to work and are actively seeking employment, as a proportion of the PEA – stood at 7%. Of that percentage, men and women between the ages of 18 and 29 lead that population. The unemployment rates are 16.8% and 11.4%, respectively.
More details about unemployment
Regarding gender, women were the most affected at a general level. Looking at specific populations, for the population aged 14 and over, the unemployment rate was 8.3% for women and 5.9% for men. Among the regions, those that showed the highest TD were the Pampean and Greater Buenos Aires regions, with 7.4% and 7.3%, respectively. On the other hand, it stands out that the region with the lowest TD was Patagonia (4.8%).
The percentage of the inactive population – people who do not have a job and are not actively looking for one – stood at 53.5%, which indicates that 15 million people are not employed in Argentina. The typical inactive reached 98.8%, while the marginal – those who have stopped looking for work but are available to work – reached 1.2%.
Active and employed population
Regarding the active population, within the universe of 14 years and over, disaggregated by sex, the activity rate (AR) for men was 68.6%, while for women the rate was 50 .2%. At a geographic level, the regions with the highest activity rates were Cuyo (47.9%), Pampeana (47.4%) and Greater Buenos Aires (46.7%). For its part, the one with the lowest activity rate was Northeast (43.6%).
Among the employed population, 73.5% are wage earners, of whom 35.9% do not have a retirement discount. On the other hand, 23.1% are self-employed, 3.0% are employers and 0.5% are unpaid family workers. Among employed wage earners, 5.8% used their own machinery/equipment to carry out their work. Likewise, of the total number of employed persons, 9.8% worked from home.
Indec comparisons
Despite job growth, the Indec reported that in the “comparison with the fourth quarter of 2021, the unemployment rate remained unchanged: it reached 7.0% on both occasions. The activity and employment rates showed decreases of 0.4 pp and 0.3 pp (46.5% against 46.9% and 43.3% against 43.6%), respectively. In none of these rates were the differences statistically significant”
In the year-on-year comparison, the activity rate in the first quarter of 2022 remained stable: it was 46.5%, 0.2 pp above the previous value (46.3%). The employment rate reached 43.3%, 1.7 pp above the same quarter of the previous year (41.6%) and the unemployment rate was 7.0%, 3.2 pp below (10, two%). Both differences were statistically significant.
