Labor market under pressure: the five keys that undermine employment

Social concern has something to hold on to: the labor market is plagued by several problems and in almost none of them there is a chance for improvement.

Since the beginning of Javier Milei’s administration in December 2023, unemployment It went from 5.7% to 7.5% at the end of 2025. This implies that unemployment reaches 1.7 million people. It is estimated that more than 200,000 people lost their jobs in this period. Of them, 70,000 worked in the public sector.

Part of the drop in formal employment was offset by an increase in self-employment and informality, which prevented the official unemployment rate from rising even further. At the same time, self-employment embodied in the monotax is the category that increased the most, with an increase of 7.8% since November 2023.

Labor informality reaches 43.3% of workers: Four out of 4 out of every 10 employees do not have retirement contributions, social work, bonuses, or paid vacations. In areas such as construction and domestic service, informality exceeds 76%. Faced with this reality, the Government’s response is to commit to labor reform to ensure that companies, with lower costs, agree to formalize workers. But with economic activity showing no solid signs of recovery, the effective hiring of workers is in limbo.

With incomes deteriorating, the number of workers with more than one source of income is increasing. This leads to multiple employment reaching record levels: according to official data, It places 12.2% of the employed, 1.6 million people.

Behind these numbers is the phenomenon of workers on platforms such as Uber, Cabify and Rappi, who are not only used by people without formal employment, but are increasingly in demand by people who need a job. second income so they can close their accounts.

According to INDEC data, the salary of formal workers in the private sector fell in real terms (that is, considering the effect of inflation) by 3.5% in February 2026, compared to November 2023.

Public sector salaries bore the brunt: they fell by 18.3% in real terms. There are disparate data on the informal sector. While the INDEC nominal index shows a cumulative increase of 31.3% So far in Javier Milei’s administration, specialists and economists warn that this figure does not reflect a real sustainable improvement due to measurement problems and the strong previous delay.

In sectors linked to energy and mining Employment grew in these two and a half years with Vaca Muerta and lithium as central drivers. Although they are the segments that generate the most dollars, they have low demand for workers.

On the other hand, employment falls in the areas that traditionally demand more jobs: construction, industry and commerce. In the manufacturing sector, 80,000 jobs have been lost so far this administration.