Employment in Argentina - statistics & facts
With one of the highest informality rates in Latin America, Argentina’s labor market keywords often are inflexibility, inequity, and inefficiency. Around 22.7 percent of total employment is considered vulnerable due to significant economic risks such as falling below the poverty line and the impossibility of getting social protection or formal work arrangements. In 2022, another 16.4 percent of workers already had an average income below sufficient wages to live without any dimensions of vulnerability. The problems were exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and inflationary crisis the country still faces, where the share of the population considered economically active was reduced and the restrictions augmented the difficulties of getting sufficient means of survival.
The restrictions and measures to stop the spread of the virus also heavily impacted unemployment in Argentina, going from 9.84 percent in 2019 to 11.46 percent in 2020. The year after registered an important recovery and in 2023, the country registered the lowest rate in the last 15 years. This volatility in unemployment exacerbates the concerns of the population about the complicated labor market in two main ways: firstly because more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been unsuccessfully looking for new employment for more than a year and secondly, due to higher unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24, which in 2022 was around 18.98 percent.
Employment and unemployment
In 2022, Argentina registered a labor force participation of 70 percent for men and around 51 percent for women, within a labor force of over 21 million workers. During the last two decades, the female participation rate had a considerable increase, while their male counterparts decreased significantly. During that same year, almost three-quarters of the total employed population were employees and, in 2022, around 72.8 percent worked in the services industry. The importance of the tertiary sector in the Argentinian labor market continues to expand, even though the share of GDP generated by services fell due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.The restrictions and measures to stop the spread of the virus also heavily impacted unemployment in Argentina, going from 9.84 percent in 2019 to 11.46 percent in 2020. The year after registered an important recovery and in 2023, the country registered the lowest rate in the last 15 years. This volatility in unemployment exacerbates the concerns of the population about the complicated labor market in two main ways: firstly because more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been unsuccessfully looking for new employment for more than a year and secondly, due to higher unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24, which in 2022 was around 18.98 percent.
