Argentina's Macrisis: Unemployment reaches 10.1% - highest in 13 years
Data published today by Argentina's Statistics and Census Institute (INDEC) show that the nation's unemployment rate rose in the first quarter to 10.1%.
The rate represents a 1.0% increase from the 9.1% recorded in the previous quarter - and the highest since a 10.2% rate in the third quarter of 2006, as the country was recovering from its 2001-02 collapse.
INDEC also reported GDP fell 5.8% in the first quarter of 2019 from the same time last year. Domestic demand fell 12.4%, of which fixed investment (construction and machinery) collapsed by 24.6%.
Some 296,000 registered jobs were lost between January 2018 and March 2019 - equivalent to 2.2 million jobs lost in the U.S.
The data showed that the incidence of unregistered labor rose from 33.9% of the total to 35% - indicating that unemployment would be higher but for growing reliance on often precarious self-employment.
Inflation in May meanwhile reached 57.4%, with wholesale prices up 68.5%. Real wages were down 11.3% in March from the same time last year - and 18.6% from their high point in November 2015.
Some 58% of Argentines fear losing their job according to a recent study, while 75% report losing purchasing power.
Bicycle crash
The latest unemployment data represent a sharp increase from the 5.9% inherited by Macri in late 2015, when he was narrowly elected on promises to spark sluggish growth with deregulation and tax cuts.
Costly corporate tax cuts failed to spur investment or exports, and $68 billion has instead left the country since he took office. Macri resorted to foreign borrowing to cover said losses, more than doubling Argentina's public foreign debt to over $200 billion.
A $60 billion carry-trade debt bubble known locally as the "financial bicycle" ultimately collapsed in April 2018, triggering the current crisis and forcing Macri to resort to a record, $57 billion IMF bailout.
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Pedestrians walk by a homeless encampment in Buenos Aires' financial district.
The city's living standard was second only to neighboring Montevideo among large Latin American cities. But rising unemployment and 60% inflation rates has doubled the number of homeless since Macri took office in late 2015.
