It is a dramatic number. It will be known between Monday and Tuesday, and it will once again bother Cristina Kirchner, urgently needed to separate as much as possible from the Government that she herself formed so that the Frente de Todos continues to be competitive in the face of 2023. The number of workers who, despite having an income, are poor rose again in 2022. The number will once again be close to 30%. This implies that three out of every ten workers cannot exceed this critical threshold, mainly due to the acceleration in prices this year.
This is a piece of information that will be made public by the Social Debt Observatory coordinated by the sociologist Agustín Salvia next week. In 2019, the number of working poor reached 27.8%. In 2020, if the unemployed are considered, it rose to 31.3% in the pandemic. In 2021 it dropped to 27.4%. In 2022 it is close to 30%. On Tuesday, the Argentine Catholic University (UCA) will also disseminate its general poverty data in a presentation that will be held at that university.
It is not an unexpected number for experts. Blank private wages have fallen 1.3% so far this year, while they have slipped 1.5% in twelve months. But “those below” are the worst off. For informal workers, the inflationary liquefaction is deeper. According to Idesa, so far in 2022, their salaries have fallen 9.8%, while in the last year they have fallen 4.4%. The pocket has become a real drama.
A panoramic photo explains the global discouragement. In the fifty-seven months that elapsed between January 2018 and September 2022, according to Iaraf, formal private workers lost the equivalent of 7.7 salaries; the public ones, 9.6 salaries and the informal ones, 12.5 salaries. The latter lost a full year. It is a spiral of desolation.
It is also a symptom of why it did not reach the economic rebound of 2021, after the extended quarantine. The great labor recovery was in informal employment and self-employment, the salary most affected. The so-called undeclared work grew from 31.5% to 37.8% in twelve months in the second quarter of 2022, the worst record for that rate since 2008.
The basic food basket, which marks indigence, doubled its value in one year, according to October data from INDEC. The expert from the Di Tella University, Martín Rozada, predicted that the poverty data for the semester between May and October would be close to 40% (39.7% to be exact). The first scratch on Sergio Massa’s car came known as homelessness.
The team led by the Minister of Economy made two promises. The first, that the consumer price index for November would start with a five ahead. The private ones remain at the 6% floor. We will have to see what INDEC says on Thursday the 15th. The other commitment from Tigrense is that inflation will begin with a three ahead in March 2023.
While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) supports Massa’s adjustment to spending (actually, inflation) four months ago and the businessmen see in the minister a certain rationality and political poise to avoid disruptions, the social situation begins to encourage dissidence within the Frente de Todos coalition.
“We are not going to accept if Cristina agrees to lead the Massa or Alberto formula,” said Juan Grabois in radio statements in the last hours and added: “The government betrayed the electoral contract and is rolling out the red carpet for Larreta.” About the leader of UTEP they say that he usually rants always with the same enumeration: “His economic and social policy, his geopolitical vision, neither the IMF, nor the soybean dollar, nor Galperín, nor Manzano, nor Gerardo Morales, nor Filiberti nor Marijuan, are supported.” That Grabois repeats “whether he likes it or not” to Cristina Kirchner.
Close to the vice president there is support for the minister with whom the government intervened in Alberto Fernández. “Massa and Cristina are working as a team all the time on the subject,” they say about the income. “Sergio is committed to lowering inflation to 3%,” add. On the sayings of Grabois they delimit: “There is a lot of self-employment in this space.”
Massa must give concrete results. It is that he not only put on a deadline clear to contain prices. He explained to the G6 businessmen that the only way for the Frente de Todos to be competitive in the elections is by lowering inflation. All the polls say so. The task is daunting: the market believes that in 2023 it will be close to 100%; Massa, at 60%.
Beyond the fear of Cristina Kirchner for the affectation that her mass of voters may suffer due to the liquefaction of income that is deepening in the country and especially in the Buenos Aires suburbs (where there are more poor people), the conditional support for Massa exists because she continues being a guarantee of stability. Fulfillment of the goals for the third quarter with the Fund and the new soybean dollar will add foreign currency to the reserves of the Central Bank (BCRA) to cross a calm end of the year.
But the problem is not solved. It kicks. Days ago, ALyC Aurum recalled that in the first edition of the soybean dollar, financial prices (MEP dollar and Cash with Settlement) had an upward reaction seven business days after the settlement began. That would be next week. It is likely that the disbursement of the Fund and an automatic financial exchange agreement with the US will delay this effect.
A soybean dollar between $230-$240 with eight million tons liquidated would result in a monetary issue for 0.88-0.94% of GDP, financial analysts believe. Difficult to stop inflation with that mountain of pesos, beyond the staging of freezes in the province of Buenos Aires with Axel Kicillof and Augusto Costa. They are messages for the boss.
The effect on income has its correlate in the numbers that are handled by the policy. With data from the UTDT and Poliarquía, the prestigious political scientist Ignacio Labaqui showed that the Confidence in Government Index today, after 35 months of management, is on the floor. It is the lowest both when compared to the two governments of Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri, and the lowest in the Fernández administration (23.8%). For this reason, the vice president faces a two-sided political struggle in the face of next year’s presidential elections: since 85% of Argentines ask for a change, she must fight for that attribute. “The change is us”, said Máximo Kirchner in Entre Ríos. The other is to choose against mirror. For the Argentines to “be happy again”, as he promised, the vice must delete the tweet with which he designated the President.