Milei Moves to Cut 20,000 More State Jobs

President Javier Milei’s government has opened a voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at another 20,000 public-sector jobs. More than 77,000 state posts have been cut since he took office in December 2023. Published in the Official Gazette on Monday, Decree 1203/2026 offers eligible employees compensation of up to 25 gross monthly salaries. Once a worker accepts, the state permanently removes the post from its budget.

Who the decree covers

The offer covers permanent staff and employees on indefinite-term contracts in the centralised national administration. It doesn’t apply to temporary workers or staff at decentralised agencies; the ANSES social security agency has a separate scheme. Compensation depends on an employee’s age, length of service and pension status, with different arrangements for workers nearing retirement.

Employees who accept can’t return to national public-sector employment for eight years. The restriction includes management positions, advisory roles and contracts, but university teaching is exempt. The decree doesn’t just provide departing workers with a payment: it also bars recipients from re-entering the national public workforce through those routes during the specified period.

Cuts, jobs and the government’s rationale

Deregulation & State Transformation Minister Federico Sturzenegger described the scheme as part of the government’s drive to reduce expenditure. “We continue to look for ways to reduce public spending so we can keep cutting taxes,” he wrote in a post on X.

Figures Sturzenegger released in September showed that the national public administration had cut 21 percent of its jobs since Milei took office in December 2023, a reduction equal to 77,500 positions. The report also cited more than 77,000 state workers who had lost their posts since that date.

The reported figures also show losses in private employment. Argentina has lost as many as 241,000 private-sector payroll jobs since Milei took office, while the number of private-sector employers has fallen to 482,000 companies, its lowest level since 2007, according to think tank Fundar. Those figures track separate changes in public employment, private payrolls and the number of employers. The report doesn’t say the new redundancy scheme caused the private-sector losses.

Sturzenegger has pointed to the creation of around 400,000 jobs. His figures include informal employment and self-employed workers. Informal employment has risen by three percentage points over the last three years, reaching around 45 percent. The government’s job-creation figure and the reported decline in private payroll employment therefore measure different kinds of work.

Union opposition

The ATE state-workers’ association announced a demonstration against the redundancy scheme. Its general secretary, Rodolfo Aguiar, rejected the government’s description of the departures as voluntary. “This is not voluntary redundancy, it is coercive dismissal. We totally reject this decree,” he wrote on X.

The decree sets out compensation, eligibility rules and employment restrictions. The union, meanwhile, has publicly challenged whether workers can regard the offer as voluntary. The measure adds another proposed reduction to a public administration where the government’s own figures show that more than one in five jobs have been cut since Milei took office.