Even before Macri took office in December 2015, it was clear that his shock devaluation would cause a jump in unemployment - so what's a Panama Papers kleptocrat to do?
He simply declared a "statistical emergency" - and quashed the IV 2015 and the I 2016 jobless numbers (though jobs data are published monthly in Argentina, unemployment data are published quarterly).
Once his honeymoon wore off, mid-year, Congress finally demanded that employment and GDP data be published - and sure enough, they showed that unemployment jumped from 5.9% in III 2015, to 9.3% in II 2016.
And the two missing quarters? His statistics director (a Trump-style misogynist cabrón, who later died of a massive heart attack) had them destroyed (a felony) - but officials from the previous administration stated that the IV 2015 data would've read 5.4%.
These days, of course, most Argentines earn so little that the point is almost moot (the minimum wage has lost 60% of its real value since then - and many of the "employed" have but odd jobs and delivery gigs for a few hours a week, earning "African" wages as they're called down there).
That's Trump's economic model.
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