More poverty in a destroyed economy that lost 3.4 million jobs

You can start at the beginning, in the middle or at the end and also move through the information from side to side, because many variables are explained by each other. But what will not be changed in any of the exercises is the result, i.e. very complicated economic and social panorama, critical, which will limit any improvement during 2021 and which, from the outset, will spice up the election year.

All or much of this chart appears, along with numbers that are also details, in a Central Bank report. Added drag, box deterioration shows the impact of Covid-19 and how the government dealt with it, with quarantine shots.

Some of the most difficult and worrying data can be found in the chapter devoted to examining the employment situation, in which it is possible to find, among others:

─ That compared to the same period of 2019, during the second quarter of this year lost 3.4 million jobsIn other words, due to the combination of the economic crisis, lockdown and transport blockages, 3.4 million people were left out of work year after year. And if we add those who had already lost it, the count ends in an area of ​​5 million and something.

─El 44% of jobs lost were informal occupationsIn other words, unstable, without legal protection, without pension guarantees and very poorly paid. And 29%, independent or a little more.

─ A detail that looks like a lot of details reveals that half of those who find themselves in such a situation they are over 64 years old, which is equivalent to saying population at risk and at risk of viral epidemic. Another reports that 25% of the population lives in the heart of Greater Buenos Aires, still neglected and unprotected.

In case it needs to be riveted, beating precarious work means poverty over poverty and social inequalities on social inequalities. With the magnifying glass looking at the panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, the World Bank has predicted that the progress made over the past 14 years will be erased in the region and, therefore, will regress towards the parameters of 2006.

Is it possible to draw an inverse parallel between the projection of the World Bank and the rise that poverty has hit here, until reaching the 44.2% that the Catholic University has just estimated. This is, I wonder how many years will it take to drop to 25.9% from 2011, an unenviable percentage by the way that has taken place during the last year of considerable economic growth.

Specifically, in light of our current difficulties, a comment included in the BCRA report reads: “This scenario could have been even more unfavorable if measures aimed at restoring income and maintaining employment had not been put in place. implemented.

True, but at the wrong time. The measurements were the Emergency family income, which subsidized around 9 million very low-income people, and the ATP program, which covered part of the wages and supported the employment of some 2.4 million workers. The problem is that both regimes are on the way out, driven by the budget adjustment that Alberto Fernández denies and it grows everywhere.

On the other hand, it is a deconstructed, backward economy, where productive investment disappeared years ago and the blows of the pandemic shook like few others in the region. In this territory where parate has been the rule since 2011, the social crisis has landed and there we now have:

─ That despite the government’s triumphalism, the activity is still far from having returned to its pre-pandemic level: It is 7 percentage points below February, when the recession that had returned to the charge in November 2017 had not yet bottomed out. So we continue to dive into the basement basement.

─ In the second quarter of this year, the consumption plus investment mix marked the worst record in the historical series, with reds of 22 and 38% respectively. There was some improvement in the third quarter, but without exceeding minimum levels in key issues which together account for 60% of average family spending, such as transport, health, education, housing and amenities. Hobbies.

─ Still focused on pre-pandemic, only in three sectors out of a total of fifteen activity is better than in September 2019: finance, gas and water and agriculture. As we know, in September 2019, the economy was already on the brakes.

─ During this pandemic period, the The average real wage fell by 5.6% and thus accumulates 31 consecutive months in the ravine. No coincidence, with a drift calculated at 12%, consumption is about to end for about three years without showing any signs of life.

It is clear that it is difficult to find a way out of the social crisis in an economy which is shrinking and which, on top of that, has stopped creating jobs, let’s say good ones. Among those to whom other less qualified people are hooked, if not directly traders, there are thousands.

Social security statistics indicate that in the private sector, registered employees, in blank, are now half a million fewer than in January 2018 and that, since then, the figures always have a minus sign. And if the benchmark is aimed at the public sector, we have that the upward curve was definitively cut in November of last year, possibly or surely because the K incorporations coincided with a cleaning of the M positions.

In fact, another World Bank report deals with a similar set. He predicts that Latin America’s average GDP will decline by 7.9% this year; 7.2% of that of Colombia; 6.3% in Chile and 5.4% in Brazil. For Argentina, the forecast does not differ too much from the target set by the Ministry of the Economy for the national budget: a drop of 12.3% and four long points above the regional average, estimates the Bank global.

With or without Covid, something similar happens when you go to inflation. Now in the savings plan numbers, where in Brazil and Chile says 3.9 and 3% per year in October, in the Argentine locker we find 3.8% but only for October; the annual says a wordless 37.2%.

The sample book can go on with the dollar, the rate freeze, or the effectiveness of price controls, but with what there is, it seems enough. Better to say or say without looking back, enough to contrast the effects and results of the policies that everyone has implemented in the face of the pandemic, including the effects and results of non-policies. No whim, these are perfectly comparable savings.

And since we are, a doubt or an event: What is Alberto Fernández talking about when he says that we are “at a founding moment to make another country”?