Four in ten workers in Argentina are informally employed, UBA report finds

In the fourth quarter of last year, Argentina's labour informality rate stood at 43 percent – meaning that more than four in ten workers are in jobs not covered by relevant labour, tax and social security legislation.

The INDEC national statistics bureau reported on Wednesday that unemployment rose to 7.5 percent in the final quarter of 2025. Year-on-year, according to the agency, the unemployment rate increased by around one percentage point.

The findings come from a report coordinated by Roxana Maurizio and Luis Beccaria, produced by the Employment, Distribution and Labour Institutions Area (EDIL) of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy (IIEP) at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Faculty of Economics.

According to the study, 32 percent of informal workers live in poor households, while a further 27 percent are considered vulnerable to falling into poverty.

The indicators show that seven in ten workers aged between 16 and 24 are in informal employment, reflecting the difficulties this group faces in entering the labour market. 

Young people experience a significantly higher informality rate than other age groups.

In the third quarter of 2025, the rate for this group stood at 67.4 percent, nearly 24 percentage points higher than the overall rate.

By contrast, workers aged between 45 and 64 (60 in the case of women) have the lowest informality rate, at 34.2 percent, followed by those aged 25 to 44 (42.2 percent) and those aged 65 and over (57.8 percent).

In other words, the highest incidence of informality occurs both at the beginning and the end of working life.

Most informal workers are concentrated in Greater Buenos Aires.

Argentina's informality rate – matching levels recorded in the second quarter of 2008 – has remained persistently high for 17 years.

Compared with nine Latin American countries – a region characterised by labour informality and precarious employment – Argentina ranks fourth, behind Chile, Brazil and Costa Rica.