almost 6 out of 10 young workers are informal

He 36.4% of workers in a dependency relationship are not registered with social security in the second quarter of the year, which means that Almost 4 out of every 10 workers in the country do not have basic labor rights such as retirement, social work and coverage against layoffs. That is, they are informal. This is detailed in a report coordinated by Roxana Maurizio and Luis Beccaria prepared by the Area of ​​Employment, Distribution and Labor Institutions (EDIL), belonging to the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy (IIEP) of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the UBA.

Labor informality is not something exclusive to this Government. “The long-term view (since 2003) places the informality rate at a value similar to that observed in the second quarter of 2008 and 2010. From that year until the outbreak of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the informality rate remained at values ​​between 32% and 35.7%,” the document adds.

Despite the economic growth during Kirchnerism benefited by the international tailwind, labor informality did not reach 30%. Then with the Macri governments and later with the Frente de Todos, unregistered employment increased. “Beyond fluctuations (and excluding the pandemic period), the informality rate has remained relatively constant and at a very high value for 15 years,” the report warns.

Informality also implies a lower salary in relation to formal workers. According to the document, “if a formal employee obtains a monthly salary of $100, an informal worker with the same educational level, the same age, in the same region, working in the same branch of activity and in a company of the same size will obtain a monthly remuneration of $59.8”, that is, a gap of 40.2%.

Young people and women, the most affected

Labor informality affects women and young people more. In the first quarter of 2024 (latest EPH microdata available to perform this analysis), the salaried informality rate total was 35.6%, being 34.2% among men and amounts to 37.2% among women.

That is, on average, the female informality rate in the first months of 2024 was 3 percentage points higher than the male rate. However, given the greater proportion of men in total salaried employment (54%), they account for 52% of total salaried informality.

According to the document, the informality rate among young people is “significantly higher than other age groups.” In the first quarter of 2024 it was almost 58%, 23 percentage points higher than the global rate. That is to say, Almost 6 out of every 10 young workers in a dependent relationship are not covered by labor regulations and social security.

Informality rates also vary significantly depending on branch of activity. At one extreme are the public sector (which includes both public administration and public education and health services) and financial services, with an incidence of informality of 9.4% and 24.5%, respectively.

Meanwhile, there is greater informality in construction (70%) and domestic service (76%). “These values ​​are particularly critical when considering that they are sectors that concentrate the highest proportion of men and women with a lower educational level, respectively. Around 21% of men with up to incomplete secondary school work in construction, while almost 50% of women with that educational level do so in private homes,” the report adds.

Job insecurity and the outsourcing of tasks acquired an increasingly greater dimension. While a significant sector of the population is unemployed, underemployed and subjected to the same misery of not making ends meet, others are subjected to endless work days.

Meanwhile, the Government regulated the labor chapter of the Base Law, which implies greater labor flexibility. Faced with this scourge, the Left proposes to work six hours a day with five working days a weekthat is, thirty hours a week, without salary reduction and with a minimum wage equal to the family basket. The proposal aims to ensure that no one is left without a job. It is so that we work less and we all work. But also so that we do it with all rights, that is why we also propose the end of labor outsourcing, with the transfer of these workers to a permanent plant. If this is applied in the 12,000 main companies in the country, it could create a million new jobs with rights.