The family income of the middle class has been falling and is shifting to the employment of domestic staff. Official data shows that Private House workers registered as of February 2024 totaled 456,337, below the 464,625 in November 2023 and far from the 501,319 at the end of 2019. We have to go back to the end of 2016 – with 456,555 contributors – to find a number similar to February of this year.
“In relation to February 2023, the year-on-year reduction is for workers in private homes, with a decrease of 17,504 people, representing in relative terms less than 4.9%,” states a Social Security Report. It is assumed that the drop among those not registered is greater.
According to the specialist Juan Luis Bour, “there is a typical family income effect: Real income falls and expenses are adjusted. Contracting under the formal modality is stopped and In addition, those that are there are cut. There is a kind of “joint production” although it may be that formal employment is falling and informal employment is growing or both are falling, which is likely if the fall in family income continues.”
The latest INDEC report highlights that, over 1,701,000 positions of work of domestic staff, in the fourth quarter 1,206,000 were not registered by their employers. Informal work in this sector represents 71% of the total, which, in turn, is the one that most uses the pension moratorium to retire.
Business advisor Marcelo Aquino says “the possible causes are the cost of living and the adequacy of the family budgets of the employers of this profile of workers. And the cost of travel expenses and the loss of income of the staff when the employer does not recognize this additional amount above the remuneration.”
For Matías Isequilla, legal advisor of the Association of Domestic and Related Workers (ATHA), ”The recent increase in employment reports What is observed in the activity can be attributed to the severe economic crisis that the country is suffering, which produced a significant loss of registered jobs, which were partly replaced by clandestine labor relations.” And he adds that “this negative process is was enhanced by the Government’s intention to repeal article 50 of law 26,844 –first through the failed labor chapter of DNU 70/23 and now through the so-called “Bases Law” that has half the approval of Deputies and is being debated in the Senate—, (refers to the elimination of fines for informal work) which constitutes the only regulatory tool applicable to work relationships in private homes that aims to combat this serious problem.”