Buenos Aires, Dec 20 (NA) -- The employment rate improved in the third quarter with 302,000 more new employed people compared to the previous quarter, driven by informal work, according to a private study on the labor market. Nationally, the employment rate was 45.4%, with improvements both in the year-on-year comparison (+0.4 percentage points, adding 238,000 new employed people) and in the comparison against the second quarter of 2025 (+0.9 p.p., totaling 302,000 new employed people), indicated the consultancy Politikon Chaco.
It added that if measured against the same quarter of 2024, of the 238,000 new employed people, some 201,000 (84%) were informal workers, "which marks a deterioration in working conditions".
Employment in different regions of the country
Among the country's regions, the GBA and the Pampeana region exhibited the highest employment rate in the country with 46.1%, being the only cases to position themselves above the national rate.
What happened with the unemployment rate
In the third quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate for the total of the 31 urban agglomerations was 6.6% and showed reductions both in the year-on-year comparison (-0.3 p.p., managing to reduce the unemployed population by 36,000 people) and in the quarterly (-1.0 p.p., with a reduction of 133,000 people).
In this context, the Pampeana region and the GBA were the ones that showed the highest unemployment rates (7.5% and 6.8% respectively), a situation supported by their high levels of activity that exert pressure on the labor supply.
Details on employment
64% of the 238,000 new employed people at the national level were concentrated in the GBA, while in the quarterly variation, the GBA explained 84% of the 302,000 new employed people. When observing the relative variation of employed people by region, in the GBA it grew 2.1% year-on-year and 3.5% at the quarterly level, thus boosting the improvement of the indicator at the national level.
"A fundamental clarification must be made at this point: although the growth of the employed population is remarkable, it was driven by informal employment," the document stated.
Regional disparities
When looking at the year-on-year comparison, the NEA, NOA and Cuyo (+0.9 p.p., +0.5 p.p. and +0.3 p.p. respectively) showed improvements; the NOA region showed no variation (0.0 p.p.). Meanwhile, Patagonia and the NEA had setbacks (-0.3 p.p. and -0.8 p.p. respectively).
Looking at the quarterly comparison (i.e., vs. 2nd quarter 2025), disparities continue: on the one hand, the GBA (+1.4 p.p.), Cuyo (-0.6 p.p.) and the Pampeana region (+0.9 p.p.) showed advances; while NOA (-0.2 p.p.) and Patagonia (-0.8 p.p.) presented setbacks.
Subsequently, in all cases below the national level, are the NEA (6.4%), Cuyo (5.1%), Patagonia (5.0%) and NOA (4.7%).
Observing the evolution, there are also disparities around regional performances.
