In the last few hours, Azucena Arbeleche met with the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou. The reason for the meeting was to achieve “proposals to maintain the purchasing power of Uruguayans.”
“We have gone through a first stage of economic recovery and there has been very good news, which is the response of the labor market, hand in hand with the recovery,” he said.
The Secretary of State highlighted as an achievement of the government that “70 thousand jobs have been created in the first quarter of the year, compared to the first quarter of 2021. That is, there are 70 thousand more people working today in the labor market than it was a year ago.”
“Today’s photo, when compared to before the pandemic, is also more positive, because there are more people working. The government measures have been to recover employment and we are working on solutions so that the purchasing power of workers and retirees can be maintained, ”she said.
INE data
However, hours after Arbeleche’s statements, the INE data on “Activity, employment and unemployment”, corresponding to March 2022, became known.
According to the statistical report, in March 2022 for the country as a whole, the activity rate stood at 61.9%, the employment rate at 57.1% and the unemployment rate at 7.7%.
In total there were 1,795,500 active people in March, of which 1,656,500 were working and 139,000 were unemployed, according to data from the National Household Survey of the INE.
Mistake
After the declarations of the minister and the data of the INE, different political actors spoke from the FA.
The former Undersecretary of Economy, Pablo Ferreri, said that he understands that it is “simply a mistake by the minister, but 70,000 jobs were not created in three months, but in the last 12 months (comparing the first quarter vs. the first quarter 2021), to that we must ‘discount’ the solidarity wages. You have to be careful with ads.
In the same vein, former Labor Minister Eduardo Brenta stated that the INE reported an increase in unemployment, but the minister includes solidarity wages as genuine jobs. “It does not respond to the extension of the same ones that have already been reduced by half. Prize for the generation of poverty”.
For her part, the Frente Amplio deputy, Bettiana Díaz, asked herself: “What? How? Again?”.
“At this point we can say that Arbeleche has already made a habit of handling data as it suits him,” the legislator sentenced.
