Photo caption. Javier Milei
There is a phrase that used to circulate in the early twentieth century — ‘rich as an Argentine.’ Not ironic, not nostalgic. Literal. At its peak, Argentina was among the ten wealthiest economies on earth, with a per capita income that rivalled France and Germany. That history matters now because Javier Milei, who took office in December 2023, wielding a literal chainsaw at campaign rallies, is running what he calls a revolution — and the world’s financial press is largely celebrating it.
The question worth asking is: a revolution for whom?
The Numbers the Government Likes
The headline figures are real, and it would be dishonest to dismiss them. Inflation fell from 211 per cent in 2023 to around 31–32 per cent annually by late 2025. Argentina achieved a fiscal surplus for the first time in 123 years. Poverty, which had spiked to 52.9 per cent in the first half of 2024 after Milei’s initial devaluation shock, had eased to roughly 31–33 per cent by late 2025 — a swing that Milei has claimed as vindication.
These are not fabrications. The problem is what they are not telling you.
The Numbers the Government Prefers You, Miss
Between November 2023 and November 2025, around 22,000 companies closed. The economy grew around 5.5 per cent in 2024, but as Economy Minister Luis Caputo himself acknowledged, that growth was concentrated in agriculture, finance, and mining sectors that generate the fewest jobs. Manufacturing and construction remain sluggish. Argentina’s formal private-sector employment is still down by roughly 100,000 jobs from when Milei took office.
More than 63,000 federal government jobs were eliminated in the first 14 months of Milei’s administration — almost 80 jobs a day, every day, for over a year. Among them: 2,208 jobs at Banco Nación, 1,872 at the national airline Aerolíneas Argentinas, 1,730 at the Buenos Aires water utility, and 640 at the national news agency Télam, which was effectively shut down. These are not abstract line items. They are services that millions of people depend on.
The informal sector now accounts for around 45 per cent of Argentina’s workforce, and among informal workers, incomes are insufficient to meet basic needs. Formal sector wages in the second half of 2025 rose only 28.8 per cent — below the 31.5 per cent inflation rate. Workers in formal employment, in other words, got poorer in real terms even during the period the government is pointing to as recovery.
And about that poverty number. Staff at INDEC, Argentina’s official statistics institute, reportedly issued a public statement urging caution, warning that the progress shown may have been ‘overestimated’ and that the figures should be read within a context of increasing labour precariousness, expanding multiple job-holding, rising household debt, and worsening unemployment.
The methodology itself produces the appearance of improvement when monthly inflation slows down — not necessarily because people’s lives have become easier, but because prices stop rising as rapidly as before while wages and income calculations begin catching up on paper. In other words, statistics can start looking better even when ordinary people continue struggling with high costs, falling purchasing power, and economic uncertainty.
Child poverty, by the numbers, still stands at 41.3 per cent. More than 4 in 10 Argentine children live in poverty.
This Has Happened Before
Argentina has been here before, and not that long ago. The IMF austerity programme of the late 1990s and early 2000s produced an economic collapse that is still one of the most referenced case studies in development economics. GDP contracted around 20 per cent. Unemployment crossed 20 per cent. The phrase ‘que se vayan todos’ — get rid of all of them — became the sound of a country that had been promised stability and received catastrophe.
The IMF is back now, with a $44-billion programme tied to the same conditionalities: fiscal surplus, currency controls, market liberalisation. The prescription has not changed much. The people being asked to absorb the adjustment have not changed either.
Why the World Is Watching
Argentina’s significance under Milei is not primarily economic — it is symbolic. It is a proof of concept for a certain kind of politics: that a government can pursue aggressive cuts to the state, eliminate public sector jobs by the tens of thousands, slash subsidies, and still win elections if it controls the inflation narrative well enough.
That is why Argentina matters far beyond Argentina itself. The country is increasingly being seen as a political template — for sections of the American right, for libertarian movements in Europe, and for those who want a real-world example of what happens when a government takes a chainsaw to the state and still survives the first year of economic shock and public anger.
The survival, though, is not evenly distributed. Argentina grew around 5.5 per cent in 2024 in sectors that generate almost no employment. Inflation fell, which matters enormously for people on fixed incomes. But around 22000 businesses closed, formal wages lost ground to inflation, 4 in 10 children remain poor, and staff at the national statistics office issued a statement asking people not to read the poverty data uncritically.
That is not a recovery. That is a country being told its pain is progress — and being asked to be grateful for it.