The Permanent Household Survey (EPH), conducted by INDEC across 31 urban agglomerations representing approximately 70% of Argentina's urban population, provides the country's most comprehensive picture of labor market conditions, household incomes and welfare indicators. The H1 2025 results document a labor market in gradual recovery following the sharp contraction of 2024. The unemployment rate fell to 6.4% in Q2 2025 — its lowest reading since 2018 — while formal private employment grew 3.7% year-on-year. These figures represent a meaningful improvement from the stress of 2024, though the distributional gains and their sustainability across the income distribution remained uneven.
Labor market indicators
The employment rate — the share of the working-age population in any form of employment — reached 45.2% in Q2 2025. Formal private employment, the highest-quality labor market segment, showed the strongest growth at 3.7% year-on-year, suggesting that job creation was concentrated in registered, social-security-contributing positions rather than informal arrangements. The underemployment rate (workers in employment but seeking additional hours) declined to 9.1%, while the informality rate — the share of employed workers without social security registration — remained elevated at 38.4% of the workforce. Structural informality is among Argentina's most persistent labor market challenges, linking closely to the size of the non-tradable service sector and the persistence of small-firm employment.
Income and poverty trends
The dramatic reduction in the poverty rate — from 52.9% at the peak in Q2 2024 to 38.9% in Q2 2025 — reflects a period in which nominal wage adjustments, particularly through formal sector collective bargaining and minimum wage updates, outpaced inflation as price growth decelerated sharply. Median per-capita household income reached $425,000 pesos in Q2 2025. Indigence — the share of the population unable to cover the basic food basket — fell to 9.8%, from a peak above 18%. The working poor — employed workers whose household income falls below the poverty line — remained significant at 22.3% of all employed persons, illustrating that employment alone is insufficient to guarantee escape from poverty at current wage levels.
Inequality and regional disparities
Income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, improved meaningfully over the 12 months to Q2 2025, declining from 0.452 to 0.431. This improvement reflects the combination of accelerating formal wage growth, pension adjustments and transfer payments during a period of decelerating inflation. The top income decile receives 29.4% of total household income, while the bottom decile receives 1.8% — a ratio of approximately 16:1. Regional disparities in welfare indicators remain pronounced: the Northwest (NOA) region records poverty rates approximately 2.4 times higher than the Patagonian provinces, reflecting differences in labor market structure, public sector dependency and access to formal employment opportunities. The conurbano bonaerense — the ring of municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires City — concentrates a disproportionate share of the country's absolute poor due to its population size.
Interpreting the EPH data
The EPH is a complex survey instrument, and its results require careful interpretation. Coverage is limited to urban areas, excluding rural populations where poverty tends to be higher. The survey's income measurement captures declared household income but underestimates capital income and informal earnings. Longitudinal comparisons are affected by changes in methodology and the suspension of EPH publication between 2014 and 2016. Despite these limitations, the EPH remains the foundational source for evidence-based analysis of Argentine household welfare, providing quarterly data on unemployment, wages, poverty and inequality that are essential for understanding how economic conditions translate into household outcomes. Our dashboard on the permanent household survey and our dashboard on employment and wages compile these indicators in interactive, time-series format.
