Lithium industry leads employment growth in Argentina’s mining sector

Argentina’s Mining Secretariat released its annual statistics which show that employment in the lithium mining sector grew by 68% year-over-year, with a total of 1482 new positions created between January 2022 and January 2023.

Overall, employment in the country’s mining sector grew by 7.9% reaching 37,850 jobs in the first month of this year, which the Secretariat deemed an all-time high.

Remote locations benefited the most from the rise in employment numbers, with the northwestern, lithium-rich provinces of Salta, Jujuy and Catamarca registering the steepest increases.

Salta reached 4,196 mining jobs, which represents a year-on-year growth of 41.3%, while Jujuy totalled 3,306 mining jobs, which is an increase of 32.2% year-on-year. Catamarca’s mining jobs rose by 22.5% for a total of 2,205 positions.

Catamarca currently hosts 14 lithium projects in different stages; Salta hosts 17, and Jujuy hosts five.

The government agency also highlighted the role of female employment in the mining sector in the past year, which grew by 25.7%, reaching 4,123 positions.

Argentina is the fourth global lithium supplier after Australia, Chile and China and is part of the so-called Lithium Triangle, where more than half of the world’s identified resources of the battery metal are found. The Triangle is a unique stripe of high-altitude land covered with lakes and white salt flats that straddles Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.

The South American country also occupies the 10th spot when it comes to silver production, which reached 800 tonnes in 2021, and is among the top 30 gold-producing countries in the world.