The purchasing power of the Minimum Wage has lost 58% since 2015

The Government decided by decree the new value of Minimum salary, vital and movil (SMVM) after there was no agreement between the union centers and the employers in the National Council of Employment, Productivity and the Minimum Living and Mobile Wage. Thus, as of May 1, 2024, the minimum wage is $234,315. An amount that is below the poverty basket.

The Research and Training Center of the Argentine Republic (CIFRA) of the CTA pointed out that “the minimum, vital and mobile wage has had a brutal decrease since the assumption of the current administration.” It is worth clarifying that the power of purchase of minimum assets during the Fernández government.

According to the CIFRA report In April 2024, the purchasing power of the minimum wage was 44.7% below the level it had in November 2019at the end of the Cambiemos government, and 57.7% below that of November 2015.

Food prices escalated. If the price of food is considered to evaluate purchasing power, “the loss of purchasing power of the minimum wage is greater when it is counted exclusively in food: -51.7% compared to November 2019 and -63.0% compared to of the same month of 2015,” CIFRA added.

The report calculated that “if the loss of purchasing power of the minimum wage that occurred from the end of 2015 to date had not occurred, in the current month of April this salary would have been almost $480,000.” But the Government offered only $234,315.

Cifra warned that “the decline is so great that the real value is even below the 2001/2002 level.”

The document compared the evolution of the minimum wage with the poverty and indigence lines, where it warned of a historical decline. “In April the minimum wage was only enough to purchase a little more than half of the basic food basket that defines the poverty line for a typical family and less than a quarter of the poverty basket, relations only comparable to the worst moment of the crisis after the outbreak of the convertibility regime,” CIFRA concluded.

It is urgent to emergency increase in salaries, pensions and social plans. No one can earn less than what the basic basket costs ($773,385 in March, according to Indec). It is necessary for the CGT and the CTA to call for a fighting plan to defeat the Milei government’s plan, rejecting the entire base and fiscal law, for the annulment of the mega-DNU and the Bullrich protocol.