Finally, the news arrived that Javier Milei was waiting for or, if you prefer, the dose of oxygen that he needed and needs, squeezed by the fall in real wages, the recession and an economic situation that tests the endurance of the population. The April digit It may be good news, but 8.8% does not look good enough to rush to claim victory.
That is, enough for the presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, to try to assimilate this data to proof that “inflation is being pulverized and has its death certificate signed.” Or so that, as soon as the INDEC number was known, President Milei shouted a goal with three “o” in a row and after cardboard he stated: “We are beating inflation.”
8.8% is a high index by any standard and, therefore, it is advisable to wait for several monthly records below 10% and well below 10% before risk making a mistake with a sound failure that, surely, someone will bill the libertarian government. It is known or should be known that a good measure of things is that which arises from comparing them with others of the same species or a similar species.
Applied to neighborhood cases, this rule shows that the 8.8% of Argentina in April doubles the 4% annually of Chile and more than doubles the 3.2% also annually of Brazil and the 3.7% of the statistic of Uruguay threw between April 23 and April 24.
In case anyone asks, the annual rate reported by INDEC is 289.4%. In its own magnitude and in the magnitude of its antecedents, the figure speaks of a disarray that is projected towards the most diverse activities, starting with the socioeconomic ones, and reinforces the contrast with the numbers in the previous paragraph where the highest is 4% From Chile.
It is clear that we are crossing our one-month inflation with what countries with economies similar to Argentina accumulate in a year. But if we measure month by month the result is that none of them reaches 1% and that Uruguay, with 0.6%, and Paraguay, with 0.8%, are the ones that are closest to 1%.
Confronted with this set of variables, very little would change if the INDEC price indices for August or October were 6% or 5.2% which appears in the latest survey of expectations carried out by the Central Bank, among analysts here and abroad.
By the way, the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse, has just reported that the annual inflation goal that the Government has set for 2024 is 139.7%. It would have been a good contribution if Posse explained, with the greatest possible detail, how it will be possible to bend a curve that today points to 289.4%, that is, almost 150 percentage points above the official guideline. To reach the figure mentioned by Posse, inflation would have to be 5% monthly between now and the end of the year.
Continuing, it is difficult to find among such price indicators where some officials get the idea that salaries “are already beginning to outpace inflation,” as the President himself said speaking about March, the latest salary statistics released by the INDEC.
That month the indicator that measures compensation rose 10.3% compared to February. And since March inflation reached a round 11%, workers’ income once again lost against inflation.
The defeat was much heavier if the annual variations are taken: 287.8% take into account inflation versus 213.8% for salaries, that is, a gap of no less than 74 points. Thus, according to the accounts of the consulting firm ACM, salaries fell by a real 22% from March 23 to March 24.
Sung and re-sung, in this film there is no labor income that loses more purchasing power than unregistered salaries, in black and reduced to half the value of those received by registered and white workers. ACM data says 41% drop during the same period.
We are talking, here, about a universe calculated at 5.8 million workers orbiting on the margins of the system and in the world of povertyto. By far, most of it is in the Buenos Aires suburbs, where living and living as one lives costs more than in the city of Buenos Aires.
Inevitably, the labor outlook hits consumption and hits hard in an economy highly dependent on private consumption. Even in decline, this variable represents 67.2% of the GDP, while it is expected that it will once again awaken investment and contribute a few points to the gross product and quality of the economy: for now it is at a very modest 19.1%.
According to the consulting firm Focus Market, mass consumption fell 20.4% in April compared to April 2023 and 17.1% compared to last March. Nothing new, the drop in demand driven by the drop in salaries and necessity coexists with a shift in purchases towards second brands or so-called own brands. The prize, 29% cheaper food and 26% cheaper cosmetics and toiletries.
Also inevitable, the slide in consumption and the recession leads to the much-feared labor problems: suspensions, layoffs, a drop in overtime.
To begin with, data attributed to the Ministry of Labor shows that between the end of November and the end of February, 63,000 private jobs disappeared; 95,000 if the reference is August, when the number of employed people reached its peak.
In construction, a kick associated with the fiscal adjustment that obsesses Milei. Figures from INDEC record job losses in a row from November to February: 53,400 compared to October, when a wave began that coincided with the stoppage of public works that, among other blows, underpins the blessed surpluses.
Of a similar kind, the recession that comes before the Libertarian government and continues with the Libertarian government reports 73,000 jobs lost since the employment peak of 2013 and 56,000 compared to 2015.
Here, everything with no exit in sight as it emerges without hesitation from another INDEC figure: it says that the idle production capacity in manufacturing activity already reaches 46.6%, which sounds similar to saying that half of the industry is stopped. And remember that the industry also exists.