MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Unemployment drops a full percentage point

Unemployment in Argentina fell to 10.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from 11.1 in the third quarter.

But if unemployed people getting state subsidies were to be considered as jobless, total unemployment in the fourth quarter would be 12.7 percent, according to data released yesterday by the INDEC national statistics and census bureau. Until the fourth quarter of 2005 unemployment had declined for 40 months running.

Meanwhile, the underemployed ? those who only have temporary jobs or work few hours a week ? declined to 11.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from 13.0 percent in the previous quarter.

As Argentina is slowly recovering from a five-year recession that ended in 2003, private experts say that the economy should grow at a sustained pace of at least six percent a year until 2010, for unemployment to fall to a one-digit figure.

Separately, Labour Minister Carlos Tomada yesterday presented businesses with an insurance programme for training and employment for unemployed which envisages that over the first 18 months the unemployed would get a maximum subsidy of 225 pesos a month and, after that, 200 pesos until completing the maximum period of the programme ? 24 months. Under the programme the private sector is committed to ? once an employee becomes a member of staff ? continues his or her training without the support of the state. (BAH)