A move from formal employment into Argentina’s informal economy can erase as much as 27.8% of a worker’s real salary, underscoring how a weak labor market is forcing households into lower-paid, more precarious jobs.
Argentina Informal Work Cuts Real Pay by 27.8%
The finding from C-P Consultora lands as unemployment climbs to 7.9% and informal work reaches 45% of the workforce, a combination that points to a broad deterioration in job quality rather than a simple lack of employment. For investors, that matters because weaker household incomes can slow consumption, pressure retail and consumer-facing companies, and complicate any recovery in domestic demand.
Sentiment IndicatorsⓘProprietary · adalytica.com · September 23, 2026
This is a snapshot — live sentiment, awareness and momentum for 130+ markets update continuously in the dashboard.Open AlphaPulse
The report, based on eight waves of Argentina’s household survey tracking workers aged 18 to 65 between 2023 and 2025, shows the biggest hit comes when salaried workers end up self-employed. Their real income falls 27.8% on average, while moving from a registered job to an unregistered one cuts purchasing power by 13.9%.
Even a transition from private-sector registered work into the public sector brings a 5.4% drop in pay, according to the study. By contrast, those who keep a registered private-sector job see a 2% average gain in real income, highlighting how formal employment remains the main channel for preserving purchasing power.
The reversal is even clearer in the other direction: workers who move from informal or self-employed jobs into formal private employment see large income gains. C-P Consultora said self-employed workers who landed registered private jobs after a year lifted real income by 34.3%, while employees moving from informal wage work into the formal private sector gained 31.6%.
Analyst Pablo Moldovan said the fastest-growing jobs are often “even more precarious” than informal wage work, with no fixed salary, supervisor, workplace or health coverage. That points to a labor market in which households are increasingly patching together income any way they can, even if it means lower earnings and less stability.
The broader macroeconomic risk is that Argentina’s labor force is absorbing stress through informality instead of job creation, which can keep wages under pressure and restrain tax collection and social security contributions. The next test will be whether any recovery in activity produces more registered hiring, or whether weak demand keeps pushing workers further down the income ladder.
| Entity | Gains | Losses |
|---|---|---|
| Formal private workers | ▲Higher real pay | ▼Fewer alternatives in weak labor market |
| Informal workers | ▲Immediate income source | ▼Lower wages, no benefits |
| Argentine consumers | ▲Some employment access | ▼Purchasing power and spending capacity |
| Formal employers and the state | ▲Potentially more formal hiring if jobs recover | ▼Weaker tax and social security base |
