Registered wages have fallen nearly 13% since President Milei took office in December 2023, according to an inflation index the government commissioned and then shelved, against an 8.2% drop in the official measure.
The gap comes down to which consumer price basket adjusts wages for inflation. INDEC, the national statistics agency, still calculates the official consumer price index with a household-spending basket from 2004. A reweighted version, built on a 2017-2018 national household expenditure survey that better reflects how Argentines spend money today, shows registered wages down 12.9% from November 2023 through June 2026, compared with 8.2% under the old methodology. The International Monetary Fund has separately said the two-decade-old basket needs updating.
The reweighted figures, compiled by CIFRA, a research center affiliated with the CTA labor-union confederation, break the decline down by sector: private-sector wages down 8.5%, the public sector overall down 20.8%, national government employees down 40.2%, and provincial public employees down 14.3%. The minimum wage fared worst, down nearly 41% under the new measure and now roughly 20% below where it stood in the 1990s.
The government had planned to adopt the reweighted methodology at the start of 2026 but reversed course just before the switch, saying it wanted to finish consolidating the broader disinflation effort first. INDEC’s monthly reports still use the older basket. Recent official data does show a partial rebound, with registered wages up 1.1% over the three months to June, but that recovery is measured against the same lower 8.2% baseline.
CIFRA’s researchers argue that government caps on collective-bargaining wage increases, used to help bring down inflation, directly drive the purchasing-power losses their index captures. The government has not directly addressed that claim.