Lacalle lied: there are more employment ties with the State than in 2019

During the 2019 campaign, Luis Lacalle Pou's economic team promised a transformation: to shrink the State in order to ease public spending and free up resources to boost the economy. At the center of that promise was a specific figure: US$100 million in annual savings if about 5,500 public sector vacancies were not filled. Azucena Arbeleche, then a star advisor and later Minister of Economy, stated this with conviction. However, the official 2024 figures reveal something different.

According to the data delivered this week to Parliament by the National Civil Service Office (ONSC), the Uruguayan State ended 2024 with more employment relationships than in 2019: 313,796 in total, 918 more than when the current government began. Of these, 300,893 are public officials and another 12,903 are hired as service contractors, interns, or scholarship holders, meaning people who do not have official status as public servants, but whose salaries are also paid by the State.

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Far from being realized, the announced "austerity shock" was put on hold or, worse yet, became fiction. Between 2023 and 2024, both categories of public employment increased. If the data are compared with those from 2019, the result is clear: the slight decrease in the number of officials (561 fewer) was more than offset by the increase in contractors (1,479 more).

The net result is a larger State, although with new forms of employment that often do not respond to efficiency criteria but rather to the political need to fill positions without facing the union or legal costs that a more direct reform would entail.

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This raises an uncomfortable question: why did a government that came to power under the banner of austerity fail even to stop the growth of the state apparatus?

Part of the answer lies in the country's political culture, where public employment is still seen as an acquired right and where cutting positions means conflicts with strong unions and clientelist structures entrenched for decades. But there is also political responsibility. The will to reform can't remain just rhetoric, and the numbers show that, beyond good intentions, there was not enough courage to do what was necessary.

If the State continues to grow, so does the burden on taxpayers. Meanwhile, as long as this logic persists, any attempt to modernize the economy will run into the same obstacle: a costly, inefficient, and change-resistant State.

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