72% of Argentine workers cannot buy basic food baskets, says study

The ultraliberal economy implemented by Javier Milei reached the end of 2025 displaying its central paradox: while the government celebrates fiscal surpluses and “historic” adjustment, the country records the biggest collapse in workers’ income in decades.

According to a study by the Gino Germani Institute (UBA), 72% of workers — formal and informal — earn less than 1 million pesos, a value lower than the Total Basic Basket in October (1,213,799 pesos). In practice, the majority of employed Argentines already live below the poverty line.

The survey details the phenomenon of “poor workers”, today structural and transversal in the economy, affecting both formal and informal employees in alarming proportions. Instead of stability, the adjustment produced widespread insecurity and an accelerated deterioration in purchasing power.

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Central contradiction: strong fiscal adjustment, real wages in ruins

The Milei government maintains that balancing public accounts and liberalizing prices would create the basis for an economic revival. The study, however, shows that the tariff shock, the informal dollarization of prices and the removal of subsidies eroded real wages at record speed.

In the formal sector — supposedly protected, 58% earn less than 1 million pesos; 1 in 5 formal workers working 40 hours a week is already poor, and many resort to extra work just to pay essential bills.

Formal employment, previously synonymous with social mobility, no longer protects against poverty. The government’s macroeconomics prioritizes fiscal indices, but neglects the income that supports consumption, well-being and internal dynamism.

Devastated informality: when working is not enough to survive

If income in the formal sector is no longer sufficient, in the informal sector the situation becomes dramatic. The study points out that: 89% of informal workers and 88% of low-skilled self-employed people live with insufficient income to cover basic items.

This broad vulnerability reveals that the economic shock — from tariffs, fuel and food — not only affects the poorest, but compromises the country’s entire productive force. The promise of economic freedom contrasts with the reality of a precarious, unstable job market incapable of guaranteeing dignified survival.

Explosion of tariffs: the rise of “residential poverty”

The study describes a new phenomenon that has become everyday in Argentina: “residential poverty”, a situation in which families are able to pay for housing and basic services, but are left without resources for adequate food or to improve their living conditions.

The reason is straightforward: in 2023, public services consumed 4% of the median salary and in 2025, they started to consume 11%.

The removal of subsidies, a central flag of the mileist adjustment, doubled the weight of tariffs on the family budget. Added to persistent food inflation, the result is devastating: employed families who go hungry, consumers without purchasing power and an absolute lack of savings capacity.

Two jobs to survive: exhaustion and decreased quality of life

The collapse in income has driven another structural phenomenon: 12% of workers now hold multiple jobs.

And it’s not just the poorest. Increasingly, qualified professionals — even with formal employment — work strenuous hours to pay for rent, services and food.

The consequence is physical and emotional exhaustion, a drop in productivity, the impossibility of social advancement, an increase in complementary informality and an entire exhausted generation.

The government celebrates “economic efficiency,” but the cost falls on the bodies and minds of overworked workers.

An economy that grows without including and adjusts without protecting

The contrast between the macroeconomic indicators displayed by the Milei government and the real lives of workers shows the depth of the model’s contradictions:

• Strict fiscal adjustment, but without income policy.
• Price liberalization, but without social protection mechanisms.
• Dollarized tariffs, but salaries crushed by inflation.
• Statistical growth, but internal consumption is shrinking.
• Supposed “normalization” of the market, but explosive informality.

Argentina is experiencing an economy that grows for the few and impoverishes the majority, consolidating a new exhausted, multiple and even more vulnerable working class.

What’s at stake: the meaning of work and the social contract

The UBA study ends with a warning that goes beyond statistics and touches the heart of the political debate: employment is no longer a guarantee of economic well-being, breaking one of the central bases of the modern social contract.

The economic policy of the Milei government produced a society in which: having a job is not enough, working formally does not protect you and working more than one job has become the rule — not the exception.

While the government insists on the “necessary adjustment” narrative, the majority of Argentines live its consequences: hunger, exhaustion and loss of perspectives.

Macroeconomics can even celebrate a surplus. But, for workers, the reality is different: a country that works more and more and lives increasingly worse.