Milei said job creation has surpassed lost employment. Here’s what the numbers show

Generalized layoffs have been one of the most widely criticized aspects of Javier Milei’s economic program.  Since the libertarian economist took office with the promise of ending inflation and “chainsawing” what he considered an oversized state, more than 300,000 formal jobs were lost.  In two separate speeches this week, however, the president said that his government “created nearly 400,000 jobs,” meaning that the balance for the administration is 113,000 new jobs. Lambasting Kirchnerists over “cherry picking,” Milei said that while it is true that formal jobs plummeted, informal jobs — which he called “independent” — rose by 346,000 and unregistered jobs by 33,000. He added that those non-formal ones would be “absorbed” by the formal sector due to the recently passed labor reform. However, some economists disagree with Milei’s prognosis. “That is an outright lie,” Marco Kofman, an economist and member of the Current Events, Labor, and Economy Observatory (MATE, by its Spanish initials), told the Herald. According to Kofman, the government’s economic program “attacked the industry through the decline in domestic demand, the unrestricted opening of the market to imports, and an exchange rate that favored foreign goods.” He went on to say that, according to the Department of Labor, Employment, and Social Security, the manufacturing industry alone lost 72,500 jobs.  Kofman said that the Milei administration also “demolished” the construction industry by putting public works to a near standstill. Private construction stalled due to lost income, credit difficulties, and a sharp rise in construction costs.  “As a result, 70,000 jobs were lost in the sector,” he said. Some sectors grew without creating new jobs Milei has consistently criticized certain sectors of the economy, calling them “inefficient.” Like Economy Minister Luis Caputo before him, in a Thursday conference, the president used the example of Lumilagro, a thermos manufacturer that fired 170 people and started to import their products, to show a company that adapted well to the new situation. While the manufacturing industry showed a slowdown, the mining, oil, agriculture, and financial sectors grew, according to the government’s statistics institute, the INDEC.  “The problem is that the volume of business in these sectors grew without creating new jobs. On the contrary, over the past year, they collectively lost more than 20,000 jobs,” said Kofman. The economist added that, in response to this situation and the decline in household income, thousands of workers turned to digital platforms to become partners with ride-hailing and delivery apps. Informal employment grew rapidly through the third quarter of 2025.  Kofman also contested Milei’s assessment that informal jobs would become formal thanks to the recently passed labor reform. He said that more than a third of the new informal workers — between 90,000 and 120,000 — are linked to apps that have a “partner” scheme that only incorporates informal workers. Kofman added that, since late 2025, the creation of informal jobs has slowed.  “The app sector appears saturated: it can barely sustain the replacement of workers who leave the apps with new entrants. This is to be expected for an industry that, in a short time, destroys the capital — the vehicle — with which the worker operates daily,” he said. Regarding informal workers outside the app ecosystem, Kofman said that the labor reform “reduces oversight” and “limits employees’ ability to report their employer for irregularities.” “If an employer can continue hiring workers off the books, why would they hire them legally? It makes no sense,” he said. “Hiring irregularly will remain the cheaper option.” “There’s no basis for the claim that, since it would be easier to fire employees, companies would hire them legally,” he concluded.