Argentina's unemployment rate rose to 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, rising 2.1 percentage points from a year earlier.
The data, published by the INDEC national statistics bureau on Thursday, underlines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the country's workforce, which has hit sectors across the economy.
Compared to the third quarter of last year, unemployment fell 0.8 percentage points, according to the official report. At the end of 2019, 8.9 percent of the economically active population were jobless.
INDEC also said that underemployment (underuse of a worker's skills, part-time or partially idle work) in the fourth quarter reached 15.1 percent, compared to 13.4 percent in the previous period.
Argentina's economy contracted 9.9 percent in 2020, its worst slump since 2002, and is now in its third year of a recession. The crisis has been severely impacted by the semi-paralysis of activities forced by the pandemic.
"Another of the effects of the pandemic on the labour market was that the number of people who worked from their homes reached 20.2 percent, at similar levels to the two previous quarters, but with an increase of 14.4 percentage points with respect to the same period of 2019," INDEC also noted.
The study was carried out with data from the country's 31 most populated urban centres, where almost 29 million people live, the bureau added.
Argentina's economically active population is 12.9 million people, with 8.1 million permanent salaried workers, according to the latest calculations from the bureau.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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