Trade and services: 340 thousand jobs are the most affected

As the end of March approaches, concern grows among employers and workers about how they will be able to cover their wages in the midst of an almost paralyzed economy. For those who work informally or generate income on their own, the situation is even more dramatic.

This anguish cuts across two sectors with high participation of workers: commerce and services. In both, more than a million Cordoba people work in different modalities (registered and informal, salaried and self-employed).

And the activity accuses, according to data from the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services, a parate that keeps 70 percent of its economic units closed and without the flow of funds.

In such a picture, that entity and, at the local level, the Córdoba Chamber of Commerce have been requesting a series of relief measures to deal with the situation. They insist that what was announced by the national and provincial governments is not enough, given the gravity of the situation.

To make the number of workers affected more precise, the analysis committee of the Economic Analysis Forum for Trade and Services, with the assistance of the consultancy Economic Trends, produced a data map.

The survey indicates that a third of employment in the sector (31.1 percent), in all its forms, is in the most critical scenario. There are 339,510 workers who work in the activities paralyzed totally or almost completely by the quarantine.

In this universe, the survey marks a first critical group that includes the hotel industry, which employs 3,484 workers (0.3 percent of the total); tourist agencies and operators (4,469 workers, 0.4 percent), the entertainment sector (28,548 workers, 2.6%) and gastronomy (70,463 workers, 6.5%).

“The jobs at risk in this group are 106,964, equivalent to 9.8 percent of the total,” points out the survey.

To these is added a critical conglomerate, which includes the clothing and footwear trade (29,236 workers), sale of construction materials and hardware stores (16,037), trade in automobiles and spare parts (14,776 employees), and the rest of the shops ( 172,497 workers, 15.8%).

In total, in all these items, the jobs impacted are 232,546. Both sets make up the third of the employment with the greatest threat cited at the beginning.

In disparate activity

Outside of the aforementioned segments, the Forum study together with Economic Trends demarcates a third group of “high negative potential impact”, although of lesser magnitude than the previous ones.

There it includes those who work in the sale of fuels (7,220 people) and the transport sector (73,042 workers, 6.7% of the total), affected by less mobility, although excepted from isolation.

A fourth set is made up of the rest of the services, where there is a mosaic of activities (professional, educational services, etc.) that have, in general, a greater possibility of continuing to function, at least in part, through teleworking, although also with nuances.

The shops selling food and beverages (supermarkets, hypermarkets, etc.) are the fifth group. They can be affected by less economic activity, although to a lesser extent than durable goods stores. Some 86,118 people work there.

Finally, private human health maintains its activity, although it faces other difficulties.

In the province: Formal employees

523,477 There are in commerce and services. Another 234,544 are informal; 257 thousand self-employed and 40 thousand employers.