The construction sector is one of those that is feeling the impact of the recession the most. With national public works paralyzed and provincial ones moving very slowly, the employment linked to these jobs is the first to suffer the blow of the cuts by Javier Milei’s government.
The numbers from the Institute of Statistics and Registration of the Construction Industry (Ieric) are eloquent: the number of workers employed by companies in the sector in the province of Córdoba totaled 26,678 last February.
This represents a month-on-month decrease of 2%, 6% since the beginning of the year and 13.4% since September, when the number of employees began to deteriorate, according to Ieric data.
The decrease in Córdoba in February is somewhat lower than in the same period at the national level (-2.7%). This decline represents the loss of 10 thousand positions in the second month of the year. Although it was lower than the 24 thousand fewer positions that there were in January, the truth is that This is the year with the biggest drop in the series for the month of February.
To have a historical parameter of the amount of registered employment offered by construction in Córdoba, it must be said that in May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, the floor of 16,560 people was reached. The maximum registration for the Ieric series was in April 2018, with 36,056 workers.
The following month saw the first major devaluation of Mauricio Macri’s Government and, since then, there has been no return to those record levels.
Between September and February, 4,137 construction jobs were lost in Córdoba. It must be taken into account that these are formal workers in companies registered in the Province, so it does not contemplate informal employment (in small-scale private projects) and it does register workers who, in some cases, work for companies in Córdoba, but in other provinces, such as in Neuquén (Vaca Muerta), to cite an example.
The occupation of the sector in Córdoba, in February, was equivalent to 7.4% of the 360,210 construction workers registered throughout the country. In September, they were 7% of the 439,463 who worked formally throughout Argentina.
Analyzing more broadly, the province of Buenos Aires accounted for slightly more than one in every three jobs destroyed during the month of February, in a share similar to that it holds in the structure of sectoral employment.
Smaller provinces such as Santiago del Estero, San Juan, Tucumán and Entre Ríos followed in relevance, with shares in the fall in total employment of 9.1%, 7.1%, 6.3% and 5.5%, respectively.
In monthly terms, the provinces with the highest contraction rates in the level of employment were Santiago del Estero (-14.5%), La Rioja (-11.7%), San Luis (-11.6%) and Entre Ríos (-11.4%).
It is relevant to highlight that the province of San Luis registers 10 consecutive months of sustained decline, followed by Santiago del Estero, with nine consecutive months of retraction.
Construction: provinces most and least affected by the crisis
In the year-on-year comparison, Salta was the only province that experienced an increase in formal employment (9%). In contrast, Formosa continues to present the worst relative performance, with a huge decrease in construction employment of 63.7% compared to February 2023, followed by Chaco (-57.9%) and La Rioja (-57.7 ).
In Córdoba, the interannual variation was 12.8%.
Regarding salaries, the average remuneration received by registered workers in the construction industry reached $465,112 in February, remaining practically at the same level as in January.
It should be noted that at the beginning of March a new joint agreement was signed that establishes a 14% increase for February that is applied to the basic salaries in force as of January and that was paid retroactively with the salaries of the month of March.
Córdoba has one of the worst average salaries in the sector, $376,246, 19% less than the average ($465,112), always with data from February and without the agreed increase mentioned above. Only in Chaco, Corrientes and Santiago del Estero are wages paid worse than in Córdoba.
Until February, the salary of construction employees lost 18.5% nationwide. In Córdoba, the decline was 23.5%.
In San Luis the largest collapse occurred: -33%. In Salta and Neuquén, on the contrary, they barely lost 1.2% compared to inflation.
