Two years after Javier Milei took office on December 10, 2023, Argentina’s economic argument had changed: whether lower inflation could become a durable improvement in living standards. On December 11, 2025, the national statistics agency INDEC reported November consumer prices had risen 2.5% in the month and 31.4% over 12 months, figures cited by MercoPress. Prices were still rising, but the annual rate was far below the extreme inflation that characterized the early presidency. The same day Milei’s administration submitted a labour reform bill to a newly enlarged Congress, moving the question from emergency stabilization toward jobs and household income.
The distinction between a falling inflation *rate* and falling prices was more than semantics. November’s monthly increase was higher than October’s 2.3%, according to the MercoPress account of INDEC’s release. Food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 2.8% nationally, while the basic basket used to determine the poverty threshold climbed 3.6%. Those categories matter most to people with little room to substitute away from essentials. The government could point to slower annual inflation as an achievement without assuming that supermarket prices or rent had returned to levels households remembered from before the crisis.
The poverty reversal, and its limits
The latest half-year poverty figure then available was INDEC’s first-half 2025 estimate of 31.6%, down from 38.1% in the second half of 2024 and 52.9% in the first half of 2024, as reported by the Buenos Aires Times. INDEC’s survey covered 31 urban areas; it did not mean that only a third of the country had experienced hardship. The same reporting said 45.4% of children under 14 were living in households below the poverty line in that first-half survey. The government credited disinflation and its fiscal program. Poverty had first surged following the initial devaluation and price shock, so the subsequent improvement belonged in that full sequence rather than being presented as an uninterrupted two-year decline.
Researchers cautioned against over-interpreting the measurement. Sociologist Daniel Schteingart told the Times that survey timing and the comparison of reported income with the current cost of a household basket can distort changes during rapid inflation. The Catholic University of Argentina argued that baskets based on older consumption patterns may understate the pressure from higher utilities costs. Their critiques did not erase INDEC’s reported decline; they helped explain why measured improvement could coexist with anger over care, wages or monthly bills.
From stabilization to formal work
Milei’s office submitted a labour reform proposal on December 11, Reuters reported. It proposed greater flexibility over working hours and vacations, changes to severance, incentives for registered hiring and the option of wages in foreign currency. Employers’ organization the Argentine Industrial Union expressed hope that changes could arrest job losses and help create formal work. The CGT union federation opposed the bill, especially restrictions affecting workplace assemblies, and planned a march. These competing assessments concerned a proposal at its starting line; neither its passage nor its eventual effect on employment was established at the anniversary.
Congress had changed after Milei’s October midterm victory. The Buenos Aires Herald reported that the libertarian bloc became the largest lower-house minority after newly elected deputies and other lawmakers joined it. That strengthened the president’s ability to protect vetoes, yet left the government dependent on negotiation to approve a budget and rewrite labour or tax rules. After two years of extended budgets, the chance to pass a proper 2026 spending law was itself a measure of institutional progress. It would also force explicit choices over pensions, health and education.
The two-year balance therefore resisted a single verdict. INDEC’s reported decline in poverty was real within its survey measure; the renewed monthly rise in prices and high child poverty were real parts of the same picture. The next stage would test whether disinflation could support sustained formal hiring and stronger purchasing power without reopening the fiscal crisis Milei was elected to confront.
