**Not only is the loss of formal jobs during the Javier Milei era increasingly concerning, but there are also several indicators that describe how job fragility has spread in recent years. It has been determined that the probability of remaining in the formal market for those who have a job is the lowest in the last ten years, and, at the same time, the probability of entering the labor market with a registered job is also very low in historical comparison.
The structural changes that the labor market has undergone during this administration mark a deterioration in job quality and purchasing power. This is analyzed by the consulting firm C-P in a report from last month: "Registered private salaried workers who lost their jobs and found another as a refuge suffered a significant drop in their real income. Those who found a job in the informal sector experienced a 14% reduction in their purchasing power, while those who became self-employed saw their real income decrease by 28%".
But, in addition to the loss of job quality, there is also a real destruction of jobs. Between November 2023 and April 2026, more than 235,000 registered private salaried jobs were destroyed (-3.7%), according to data from the Ministry of Labor. During the same period, 73,000 public jobs were lost (-2.1%), while 150,000 self-employed workers were created (+7.5%). Due to the loss of 20,000 jobs in private households (-4.5%), a total of almost 180,000 jobs were destroyed in the last two and a half years (-1.4%).
Microdata from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) published by INDEC reveals that the probability of a registered private salaried worker remaining in the same job after twelve months is the lowest in the last decade (76 out of every 100). To put this into perspective, in 2024-2025 this number reached 80, while in 2018-2019, the previous peak of fragility, it was at 79.
In the last two years, the proportion of workers who migrated from registered private employment to informal employment has increased (from 7.1% to 7.8%) and also to self-employment (from 3.4% to 4.6%). Thus, "of the nearly 20 workers who changed their employment modality, more than 60% remained in the labor market. However, and importantly, almost all did so under conditions of greater precariousness", revealed Economic Studies of Banco Provincia.
The conclusion of the report highlights that new jobs are of increasingly lower quality. In summary, they describe that the destruction of registered private jobs is not the only characteristic of this economy: it is also that the probability of remaining in the formal market for those who have a job is the lowest in the last ten years and that the probability of entering the labor market with a registered job is also low in historical comparison.
In the first quarter of 2026, 13.47 million workers were registered in urban agglomerations in Argentina across various occupational modalities. Of this total, 71.8% corresponded to salaried workers, 24.2% to self-employed, 3.7% to employers, and 0.3% to unpaid family workers. Compared to the same period last year, self-employed workers (+0.7 p.p.) and employers (+0.3 p.p.) increased their participation, while salaried workers (-0.9 p.p.) reduced theirs.
In this regard, Politikón Chaco highlighted that "if we look at the historical series for the first quarters (2017-2026), self-employment reached its second highest level of participation in 2026, just below the historical maximum recorded in 2021 (24.4%). In contrast, salaried employment matched the lowest record of the entire series (also observed in 2021). In accumulated terms, between 2017 and 2026, the participation of self-employment increased by 3.3 percentage points, while that of salaried employment decreased by 2.4 p.p.
"The expansion of employment shows a clearly skewed profile towards non-salaried insertion modalities. Nearly seven out of ten new jobs corresponded to self-employment, while salaried employment exhibited virtually stagnant growth. In other words, the labor market continues to generate employment primarily through self-employment strategies," concluded Politikón Chaco.
According to the latest monthly survey from July by Latam Pulse Argentina, prepared by AtlasIntel and Bloomberg, 73% of respondents defined the labor market as "bad", a figure higher than the 70% who rated the local economy the same way, and 60% evaluated their family economic situation negatively.
Furthermore, unemployment is now the second main problem in Argentina, only behind corruption (47.7%), reaching 46.5% of mentions.
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