Se destaca la pérdida de puestos de trabajo registrado y la cantidad de personas que tienen más de un empleo.
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00:00I'm going to the table to meet with Hernán Lecher, because we can talk about finance, we can talk about the dollar.
00:06In short, what matters to Argentines is whether there will be jobs and how well paid they will be.
00:12Today, unemployment data was published in Argentina. What are the results, Hernán?
00:17Unemployment was 6.9. It's very little. Do you remember that the previous quarter had given 7.7?
00:26No, no, no. It has seasonality. The quarter cannot be compared to the previous one.
00:33Sorry, so the data is not that it went down from one quarter to another, but the data that you observe is the comparison between the third quarter and the third quarter of last year.
00:42Exactly, because in fact the third quarter is usually, the seasonal effect is higher employment.
00:49So I can't compare it to the second, because it's wrong.
00:54Let's see, there are moments to say it in a simple way. In the summer you will have activities that, I don't know, like everything recreational, will have more jobs generated.
01:04Do you understand? That's the seasonality.
01:06Well, you can't compare non-equivalent quarters. When I make the comparison of the equivalent quarter, it jumped from 5.7 to 6.9, 1.2 points.
01:14What we are seeing are all the third quarters of each year.
01:19Yes, exactly. You see how it goes down and bounces. That's what you're seeing.
01:23When we saw the second quarter, throughout all the years, we found the same curve.
01:28It went down, or it went down, it went down to the second quarter of last year, to the third quarter of last year, and it bounced up.
01:35Basically, we are talking about 1.2 points. It is very little, I insist, it seems to me that it is a lot.
01:431.2 points is not a little at all, but it gives the impression that there is still a lack, unfortunately, when one thinks in terms of unemployment,
01:54regarding what is happening in economic matters. But there are two data, Pablo, and I think ...
01:59Sorry, it means that the situation can get worse.
02:02Clearly, that it can get worse over time. It will fluctuate as we have ...
02:06Yes.
02:07The fourth quarter comes out, and then a little less than what was increased with respect to the fourth quarter.
02:11The government celebrates. It's a movie.
02:14So, what I'm saying is, if you open imports, as you opened them, sooner or later it will hit you on this indicator,
02:22which for now shows a relatively low guarantee for the historical process.
02:26We saw it, in fact, just now.
02:28Argentine history averages an unemployment of more than 10% in the last 30 years.
02:34Well, so, when you look at it and say, hey, seven doesn't seem so much in that context.
02:39But the truth is that it goes up.
02:41Now, there are two data that you overshadowed, which for me are very important, to illustrate this unemployment indicator.
02:51The first has to do with the fact that what is increased are the unemployed with retirement contributions.
03:02Or it is reduced, if you want, the reverse, of workers with retirement contributions.
03:07You lost a registered job. How many? 250,000.
03:11The data that we have been saying, those who watch this program know it, 241,400 approximately.
03:18It is reduced, you are losing a private and public registered job.
03:26Now, let's say, and how did the unregistered job workers move? They remained stable.
03:33That is, you have the impact on better quality workers, at least in jobs.
03:40This is interesting, because what you are seeing is a precarious process.
03:43Maybe someone lost their job and has a job.
03:46It is understood in terms of unemployment.
03:48It was neutral, but let's say it went from one side to the other.
03:52And the third point has to do with an increase of practically 2.5 points, there we see it, of unemployed.
04:00What are these? People who have a job and look for another job.
04:02It does not reach you.
04:03It does not reach you.
04:04Poor workers.
04:05Yes, poor workers and workers who do not reach it, I would say.
04:08Pablo says, it does not reach me, then I look for another job.
04:12This is like a kind of expression that the salary is not going well.
04:18If you want to look at it, that is a good indicator.
04:20Right away we talk to a specialist, but from what Hernan tells us,
04:23then you have an increase compared to the quarter of unemployment,
04:27but you also have an increase in informal employment,
04:30and you have an increase of those who have a job, it may be formal or not, I guess,
04:36but they are looking for another job because it does not reach them.
04:38That is, we are going to a precarious scene.
04:41We are going to a deepening of precariousness.
04:44More unemployed, worse pay, and more precarious.
04:49Exactly.
04:50These are the three characteristics.
04:51Federico Pastrana is on the line.
04:53He is the director of CP Consultora.
04:55He is a specialist in macroeconomics and the labor market.
04:57Federico, I am Pablo Caruso.
04:59I am with the whole team of QR.
05:00How are you?
05:01Good evening.
05:02Thank you for the time.
05:03Good evening.
05:04Let's see.
05:05Depending on these data that you mentioned,
05:07which the Unemployment Index publishes today,
05:09what analysis do you do?
05:11And surely you were listening to what we were saying,
05:13if you share a little, where to put your eye on these data.
05:18Yes, well, indeed,
05:20I think that compared to other moments or other crises,
05:24other moments of drop in employment,
05:27today we are seeing a consolidation of a new employment pattern
05:32where precariousness is the protagonist.
05:35That is, precarious jobs absorb a part of the expulsion of registered jobs,
05:42basically.
05:43And that derives not only from what you were saying,
05:46that not everyone becomes unemployed,
05:50but that they have precarious jobs,
05:52but also a drop in the income of the unemployed.
05:55And that is what the increase in the demanding under-employment explains,
05:59which is basically the new process, if you will, that we are seeing.
06:02That is, before the employment crisis,
06:05unemployment decreases a bit, many are more precarious,
06:08they try to be self-employed, they try to make ends meet,
06:11but they are all losing their salaries or their incomes.
06:14Of course. Federico, could we say that this part is becoming a new normality
06:20in the labor market?
06:22Look, the truth is that normality,
06:25I like to call it normality when time passes a bit,
06:29and basically when a situation stabilizes.
06:32The truth is that this situation that we are living in,
06:36in the last few months, where inflation is going down,
06:39basically what it is explaining is that the government is starting to stabilize
06:42a macroeconomic model, that this macroeconomic model
06:45has a tendency to stagnate income,
06:47and where credit starts to be an important protagonist,
06:51which basically allows the government to show better indicators of activity
06:56than of employment, which is the other characteristic that appears now.
06:59Little employment is created.
07:01The little employment that is created is a very slow growth,
07:05and it takes a long time,
07:07and this is the difference between activity and employment,
07:09which is basically related to credit,
07:11so the truth is that I find it a bit difficult to call it normality
07:16when I don't see that the macroeconomic model has stabilized completely.
07:19Pablo.
07:20What does that mean, that activity goes faster than employment,
07:29that there is more recovery,
07:31and that recovery is not meaning that more employment is generated,
07:36let's say, there is more activity and that does not lead to the generation of employment,
07:40is it that simple?
07:42Yes, it is simple.
07:43Basically, it is not that there is no employment,
07:45but that much less employment is generated,
07:47and basically what they were saying before,
07:50and the worst quality of employment,
07:53what it is doing is generating a buffer for those who are left out.
07:57What is a buffer?
08:01Federico, what is a buffer?
08:03A buffer is a mattress.
08:05Basically, those who were excluded in the 90s were going to unemployment,
08:08and now we have a mattress called PREA.
08:11Oh, I think we lost communication.
08:14I was going to say labor precariousness.
08:16Labor precariousness, in terms of property,
08:19work on platforms is an important part that explains that new process,
08:25or at least the most important novelty,
08:27but we are also talking about traditional labor precariousness, right?
08:30It is a combination of things.
08:32Let me go deeper, Federico, on this issue that you said,
08:35difference between activity and employment generation.
08:40If the activity is recovered,
08:42but employment is not being recovered at the same speed.
08:46Why does that happen?
08:48Because they are sectors that recover, that do not generate employment,
08:51because the activity is emerging from importing sectors.
08:55What is the explanation for that phenomenon?
08:59The explanation has to do with heterogeneity,
09:02and that many times the averages are useless.
09:05When you analyze the averages of things that are very heterogeneous,
09:10in periods where inequality increases a lot,
09:13what you have is that a sector is doing very well,
09:16and another sector is doing very badly.
09:18On average, everything is stable,
09:21but what is happening is that some are doing very well and others are doing very badly.
09:25So if you analyze with the averages,
09:27of course, you come to wrong conclusions.
09:30And basically what happened, especially in the first semester of this year,
09:33is that heterogeneity increased a lot,
09:36and we do not see that the gaps have narrowed.
09:39That is, those who fell a lot did not recover a lot later,
09:42but there are clear winners and clear losers,
09:44and in the middle there are a lot of sectors that are trying to survive,
09:50if you will, or to appropriate a little of the economic growth of the last few months.
09:55Now, that point appears clearly where?
09:58Well, when you analyze the distribution of income,
10:00when you analyze the productive heterogeneity,
10:03where you see within the EMAE or the difference between construction,
10:07the industry indicator, the general activity indicator,
10:11you see very different realities.
10:13And you see great monthly variations.
10:15When you have those processes, that's why I say you have to take them with tweezers,
10:19you have to wait a little, see what happens,
10:22see where it stabilizes, if it stabilizes,
10:24and out there we are in a situation of quite permanent instability or with shocks,
10:28and that is a bit what characterized the macroeconomy in recent years,
10:32and the truth is that to finish doing grandiloquent analysis,
10:36you have to wait a little.
10:37What is clear is that there is a lot of heterogeneity
10:39and that you have to be careful with the averages.
10:41In that context, what I think explains, and answering your question,
10:45what I think explains this situation is that,
10:48effectively, those who drive economic activity,
10:51that is, the winners, are not sectors that particularly create employment,
10:55either because the import coefficient increased,
10:57which does not seem to have increased so much,
10:59or because it is the agro, mining and energy sectors
11:02that are not the traditional sectors that generate employment in Argentina.
11:05Federico, does this analysis also apply, for example, to the analysis of wages?
11:09Well, indeed, in wages or income, something even more complex happens,
11:13if you will, which has to do with the fact that the registered wages of the private sector,
11:18which is basically defined by the parities,
11:21manage to defend themselves much better from the crisis
11:24and the inflationary jump of the first six months of government,
11:27much better than the rest.
11:29So there you have a very large heterogeneity,
11:32because basically public wages fell 20% and recovered 3 points,
11:36while the average private wage fell 12 points and recovered practically everything.
11:41So, of course, when you say, well, what happened to the wages?
11:44And you have very different realities.
11:46And if you analyze the wages of the informals and the accountants,
11:49you also have different realities, even different from those two,
11:52and not to mention if you start looking at non-wage incomes,
11:55basically the social programs and the pensions.
11:58If you look at the pensions, you have differences,
12:00and within the social programs you also have differences,
12:03because basically they are talking to you about a very large adjustment,
12:06which helps you explain why,
12:08in the framework that the registered private wages recover
12:11and that you see the average indicator that recovers,
12:14you see the indicators of poverty and indigence,
12:16and the improvements are not so important.
12:18So if you say, what happened here?
12:20Well, what happened in the middle is that there is a changed anchor,
12:23the inflation has gone down, but there is also a fiscal adjustment
12:26that had as one of the pillars the adjustment of the provisional system.
12:29A process that is going to deepen,
12:31but that heterogeneity, if we actually continue in a model
12:34that increases the informality and decreases the registered jobs,
12:38that is, many more people, many more workers,
12:41who are going to have fewer unions ahead or fewer unions behind,
12:45making a negotiation that does not lose with inflation.
12:49There you have to say something important,
12:51let's say it's a long process, isn't it?
12:53It's a long-term process, isn't it?
12:55We got to this point and suddenly now the informality increased.
12:58Informality has been increasing for many years,
13:00it is a problem that has become structural,
13:02that's why when I wrote a little about the analysis
13:05about the latest data that came out today from the index,
13:08it seems to me that there is a process of consolidation
13:10and that you have a strong macroeconomic effect on that consolidation.
13:14So you are seeing the product of a fragmented labor market
13:18that suffers a shock.
13:20So, of course, if it is more fragmented,
13:22they will lose more than they can defend less.
13:24And if those who can defend less are many,
13:26well, there you have a big problem
13:28and basically we will see it in the consolidation
13:30of a distribution of income worse.
13:32Federico, thank you very much for this time.
13:34Thank you for calling.
13:36Very interesting, because he tells us,
13:38save with reading averages, several warnings,
13:40be careful with reading the averages,
13:42because there is so much heterogeneity
13:44that an average can explain it to you,
13:46the one that was better for you,
13:48but it is hiding very complex situations, isn't it?
13:50For example, the increase in informality.
13:53The same with regard to wages,
13:55but it would continue to consolidate
13:57because the sectors that do better
13:59in terms of economic activity,
14:01which improve,
14:03are the ones that generate the least employment.
14:05So you can have numbers of good economic activity,
14:07but a very complex situation
14:09in terms of the reality of the workers.
14:11It makes me think of one of the plates
14:13that at least I saw twice,
14:15which Ornan put,
14:17which had to do with the number of jobs
14:19that the oil and mining sector had,
14:21with respect to the number of jobs
14:23that the trade or the manufacturing industry
14:25generates,
14:27with huge differences.
14:29I don't know if you remember the data,
14:31but that difference was very noticeable,
14:33which may be explaining
14:35why there are winning sectors
14:37and why there are sectors that are losing.