SUNS 4350 Tuesday 22 December 1998
ARGENTINA: HOPELESSNESS DIGS AWAY AT THE UNEMPLOYED
Buenos Aires, Dec 18 (IPS/Marcela Valente) -- While Argentina's government celebrated falling unemployment, former Economy Minister, Domingo Cavallo Friday pointed out the figures exclude the increasing numbers who have given up hopes of ever finding a job.
The economically active population includes 13.5 million people, of whom 3.1 million have employment problems. Around 1.6 million are looking for work, and a slightly smaller number are underemployed. Women, young people and those aged more than 45 years old are the main victims of this phenomenon.
Official employment plans, which helped alleviate the 1997 situation, were drastically reduced in the last year as part of spending cuts. In any case, the low rate of pay provided by the programmes meant the beneficiaries continued looking for work.
In the Argentine capital, nearly 60 percent of the unemployed are women, and those looking for a first job do not fare any better. "Insecurity amongst young jobseekers and people aged over 45 who have lost their jobs is something you see every day," said Cavallo.
"Many workers are throwing in the towel," he warned, meaning they do not appear in unemployment statistics calculated on the basis of people actively looking for work. Many give up the search when they give up hope of finding employment or because they lack the money to pay transport costs.
This desperation is also reflected in a survey by the Union Centre for the New Majority, according to which, 85 percent of those consulted believed unemployment will remain the same or worsen in 1999, while only 12 percent thought the situation will improve.
According to the latest official figures, drawn up in October by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, unemployment stood at 12.4 percent of the economically active population, a percentage more than a whole point lower than a year previously, when it affected 13.2 percent of workers.
But this reduction - received with optimism by the government - is looked on with concern by independent analysts and companies which consider it is not so much due to the creation of new jobs as the reduction of the number of people who show they are looking for work
but can't get it.
Cavallo, who brought in the economic programme which ended high inflation in 1991, said for the moment the situation is not about to change following the creation of some new jobs as a product of the economic growth of the first years of the reform.
He also warned this effect will disappear as the economy bogs down in 1999.
Similarly, the economist Juan Jose Llach considered the 1999 employment and unemployment rates will depend to a large extent on how much the economy grows and, according to his forecast, this development will not exceed 2.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.
Leaders of the Argentine Industrial Union showed surprise at the data on falling unemployment given the pessimism of sector forecasts for 1999, where only 13 percent of companies covered in polls said they were planning to take on staff in the first half year.
Unemployment started to grow in Argentina in 1993, following the application of a neoliberal reform plan which contemplated the privatisation of public companies, trade liberalisation and public debt
reduction. The highest level ever seen in the county occurred in 1995, following the Mexican crisis, when figures hit 18.4 percent.
>From then on, and during the second term in office of President Carlos Menem, when Cavallo was replaced by today's Roque Fernandez, the rate progressively fell to settle at 12.4 percent in October.
But Cavallo insisted this reduction will not be good news. "In 1992 and 1993, employment grew and unemployment too, because the people wanted to work and had expectations of finding a job," said the former minister, today deputy for the centre Action for the Republic party.