Argentina's Macrisis: Unemployment reaches 10.1% - highest in 13 years
Data published today by Argentina's Statistics and Census Institute (INDEC) show that the nation's unemployment rate rose in the first quarter to 10.1%.
The rate represents a 1.0% increase from the 9.1% recorded in the previous quarter - and the highest since a 10.2% rate in the third quarter of 2006, as the country was recovering from its 2001-02 collapse.
INDEC also reported GDP fell 5.8% in the first quarter of 2019 from the same time last year. Domestic demand fell 12.4%, of which fixed investment (construction and machinery) collapsed by 24.6%.
Some 296,000 registered jobs were lost between January 2018 and March 2019 - equivalent to 2.2 million jobs lost in the U.S.
The data showed that the incidence of unregistered labor rose from 33.9% of the total to 35% - indicating that unemployment would be higher but for growing reliance on often precarious self-employment.
Inflation in May meanwhile reached 57.4%, with wholesale prices up 68.5%. Real wages were down 11.3% in March from the same time last year - and 18.6% from their high point in November 2015.
Some 58% of Argentines fear losing their job according to a recent study, while 75% report losing purchasing power.
Bicycle crash
The latest unemployment data represent a sharp increase from the 5.9% inherited by Macri in late 2015, when he was narrowly elected on promises to spark sluggish growth with deregulation and tax cuts.
Costly corporate tax cuts failed to spur investment or exports, and $68 billion has instead left the country since he took office. Macri resorted to foreign borrowing to cover said losses, more than doubling Argentina's public foreign debt to over $200 billion.
A $60 billion carry-trade debt bubble known locally as the "financial bicycle" ultimately collapsed in April 2018, triggering the current crisis and forcing Macri to resort to a record, $57 billion IMF bailout.
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Pedestrians walk by a homeless encampment in Buenos Aires' financial district.
The city's living standard was second only to neighboring Montevideo among large Latin American cities. But rising unemployment and 60% inflation rates has doubled the number of homeless since Macri took office in late 2015.
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They need to confront the evidence of how far their friend in the President's office has brought the country. He wasn't kidding when he promised he would change the sluggish growth. They got the hand basket to hell, instead.
Have never heard a periodical pointing out citizens having to resort to unregistered employment, possibly precarious. Forgive the silliness but I immediately thought of The Flying Wallendas:
Probably the sky's the limit in that profession, as well as the ground.
Click: https://tinyurl.com/y3d78l5g
OMG. When I looked for photos of human cannonballs, I laughed until I cried. Most of them seem to have their little hands up in front of them, by their faces, looking like little bunny rabbits, when they come whizzing out of the cannons.
I'm sorry for that display of juvenile behavior. It was unseemly.
It's really not so laughable, in reality, living with the absolute wreck of government, economy, day to day life, and all the little things people NEED ever day, must have, or go begging, with no assurance begging would even help, or be heard, or would simply be ignored, or scorned, and you'd discover nightmares beyond your understanding. All people need to remind them is the images of homeless human beings, and realizing they didn't start out that way, were probably just like them before their jobs disappeared, and their homes, and their health.
