In the fourth quarter of 2025, the informal employment rate was 43%, meaning that more than 4 out of every 10 workers are in jobs not covered by relevant legislation, whether labor, tax, or social security. The National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) reported on Wednesday that unemployment rose to 7.5% in the last quarter of 2025, according to the Argentine News Agency. Year-on-year, this represents an increase of approximately one percentage point. This is according to a report coordinated by Roxana Maurizio and Luis Beccaria and prepared by the Employment, Distribution, and Labor Institutions Area (EDIL) of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy (IIEP) of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). According to the study, 32% of these informal workers live in poor households, and 27% are in a situation of vulnerability to poverty. The indicators reveal that 7 out of every 10 workers between the ages of 16 and 24 are informal, showing the difficulties this group faces in entering the labor market. Young people experience a significantly higher rate of informality than other age groups. In the third quarter of 2025, this rate was 67.4%, almost 24 percentage points higher than the overall rate. In the same vein, workers between the ages of 45 and 64 (60 for women) have the lowest informality rate, at 34.2%, followed by the 25-44 age group (42.2%) and the 65 and over group (57.8%). This means that the highest incidence of informality occurs both at the beginning and end of working life. The majority of informal workers reside in the Greater Buenos Aires area. This informality rate—reaching levels identical to those recorded in the second quarter of 2008—has remained very high for the last 17 years. When Argentina's situation is compared to nine Latin American countries—a region characterized by labor informality and precariousness—Argentina ranks fourth, behind Chile, Brazil, and Costa Rica.
