Argentina is taking a dramatic approach to saving jobs in the Covid era: Since March, it’s been illegal for companies to fire workers, a measure no other major economy has taken for so long.

But the strategy is actually deepening a historic jobs crisis https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/covid-layoff-ban-backfires-in-one-of-world-s-worst-job-markets

On the surface, things don’t seem so dire on a global scale — unemployment spiked to 13%, lower than peaks this year in many other countries like the US or Brazil.

But under the hood, the situation is far worse...

Over two and a half million Argentines have fallen out of the job market and aren’t counted as unemployed. If they were included, unemployment would be 28.5%

For context: A similar measure of unemployment in the United States is currently 7.1%

Unable to fire workers, companies have resorted to suspending them, effectively postponing future job cuts into 2021. Suspensions rose as much as 10 times the pre-pandemic levels once the firing ban started, and remain very high.

Sergio Bono, a 56-year old pilot who was already grieving the sudden death of his adult son last year, lost his dream job at LatAm Airlines when the airline ended domestic operations in Argentina this year, citing the anti-business climate, among other reasons.

With planes still mostly grounded, Bono wants to work but he isn’t looking for jobs, meaning he isn’t counted as unemployed. He’s now trying to learn about investing so he can convert his severance from pesos into dollars. He’s worried the government will devalue the peso

At the end of our interview, I asked Bono why he let me interview him:

“My interest in this article is that it helps someone realize that they don’t have to be alone -- you can go out, you have to encourage yourself to talk and you have to confront your situation.”