Growth In Jobs Doesn’t Meet Economy Need
Some data recently released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) revealed some of the projections for the labor market, mainly with regard to the number of formal hirings and the number of unemployed in the country. According to professor Hélio Zylberstajn from the Faculty of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Actuarial Science (FEA) at USP and coordinator of the Salariometer Project of the Economic Research Institute Foundation, it is necessary to “return to growth” for a more positive future perspective.
Zylberstajn explains that the General Register of Employed and Unemployed People (Caged) is information that does not come from a sample, but represents the universe of the formal market, that is, all workers registered within the CLT are represented through this device. “Companies inform the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) every month how many people were dismissed and how many were hired”, comments the professor.
The last Caged revealed that, in the first quarter of this year, there was an increase of 526 thousand formal jobs. The professor comments that, if this number manages to be maintained in the next three quarters, Brazil would count on the creation of more than 2 million jobs this year. However, analyzing this data from the perspective of previous years, the value, instead of being positive, begins to worry specialists. This happens since, in 2021, for example, in that same quarter, there was an increase of 805 thousand vacancies. In 2022, that number was 619 thousand. According to the specialist, based on these data, it is possible to analyze that the number of jobs is growing, but the pace of growth has been decreasing.
downward trend
“The number of new hires grew by 1.6%, however, the number of those dismissed grew by 3.5%. This shows that there is a downward trend in growth that could lead to a reduction in the number of jobs”, adds Zylberstajn. In addition, it is also necessary to evaluate the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), which covers all types of links that individuals have with the labor market.
The professor comments that the data related to the PNAD for this quarter are a little more worrying: “The PNAD is showing that at this first moment we lost 1.5 million job vacancies. Of these, 900,000 remained in the labor market looking for a job and 600,000 gave up looking for a job”.
Zylberstajn also comments that this scenario is the repercussion of the loss of dynamism in the economy. The number of jobs available is too small to absorb the army of individuals that make up the Brazilian workforce. Furthermore, in one quarter, we lost about 1% of the income mass, that is, we had less money circulating in the country.
In order for this scenario to present an improvement, the specialist comments that the most practical solution is to “return to growth”, since with this it would be possible to expand the job market again. This fact depends on many things, but confidence in a government with a clear and objective direction can be a good path towards an economically positive future.