Informality, due to the advance of self-employment, has been growing more among women and young people. And the poverty of informal workers almost triples that of formal workers.
So, 34.3% of informally employed people live in a poor homeagainst 10% of the formal ones. In indigence, the contrast is even starker: 5.2% among the informal versus 1.2% among the formal.
According to a study by the National University of Rosario, in the first quarter of this year, The informality of those employed in Argentina is 44.2% according to the official INDEC measurement, versus 42.1% in the same quarter of 2025.
For its part, the informality of self-employed workers (65.3%) almost doubles that of salaried workers (37.9%) at the start of this year. And the weight of self-employment rose from 21.1% to 24.5% of employed people at the expense of salaried employment.
At the same time, self-employment became “feminized” and increased among young people. So, Women went from being 34.1% of self-employed workers in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 41.5% in the first quarter of 2026. And the generation gap widened: the formality of young people between 19 and 25 years old fell from 43.5% to 34.8% in that period, a much deeper decline than that of adults of middle ages.
Much of the expansion of independent work is female. The self-employment that was growing is more feminine, and as informal for women as for men.