MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Fourth quarter unemployment in Argentina down to 7.3%, says Indec

President Cristina Fernandez had advanced the percentage

Argentina's unemployment rate fell to 7.3% in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to a Tuesday release from the country’s national statistics institute, Indec. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had announced the number informally in a speech last week.

In January, Cristina Fernandez had said the fourth quarter unemployment rate had dropped to 7.4%. The official 7.3% rate compares with 7.5% in the third quarter and 8.4% in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Indec.

Argentina's jobless rate has declined steadily amid booming economic growth, which has been driven mainly by growing global demand for Argentine commodities and industrial goods from Brazil.

Inflation, which private sector economists say totals about 25%, is encouraging Argentines to spend money as soon as they earn it, which is fueling consumption.

Virtually no economists doubt that Argentina's economy has boomed in recent years, but most say that the government's economic data--particularly inflation and poverty estimates, but also growth data--are tainted and unreliable. Government officials have repeatedly denied such charges.

However as annual salary negotiations begin in Argentina, public and private sector unions in Buenos Aires and other major cities are demanding salary increases of more than 30%, which contrast sharply with the official inflation estimates of 11% in 2010.

Many unions question the data and expect greater inflationary pressure in 2011 given the upcoming presidential election in October.

Quoted in the local press, several leading figures of the construction (UOCRA) and health unions (ATSA) said that the demands merely reflected the evolution of day-to-day prices. Most unions are demanding quadrennial salary adjustments to prevent deterioration in their real incomes, with inflation remaining on the upward trend.