Against the market, the creative industry hires more in the pandemic

Formal employment on call The creative industry performed positively in Brazil in 2020 thanks to activities such as advertising, marketing and technology, which mitigated the economic losses of the first year of the pandemic.

This is what a study released this Tuesday (5th) by Firjan (Rio de Janeiro State Industries Federation) indicates.

According to the survey, the number of employment contracts in the creative industry rose from 919,000 in 2019 to 935,300 in 2020. The result represents an increase of 1.8% (or 16,300 new vacancies).

In the same period, the total number of jobs in the country’s formal labor market dropped by 1%, according to the survey. The number of posts dropped from 46.7 million in 2019 to 46.2 million in 2020 – minus 480,300.

“These numbers reinforce, once again, the resilience of the creative industry (even if they do not imply, in absolute terms, an exceptional performance) and its strategic potential as a generator of work and development for a recovery of the Brazilian labor market in the post-industrial period. Covid”, points out the research.

According to Firjan, the study, called Mapping of the Creative Industry in Brazil, uses data from Rais (Annual List of Social Information) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. It is the seventh edition of the survey.

In the entity’s assessment, the performance of creative employment reflected changes in demand for goods and services caused by the pandemic.

In this context, activities that were stimulated by social isolation and digitalization managed to grow in the labor market.

Those more dependent on the circulation of consumers and direct contact with the public, on the other hand, suffered loss of labor.

These differences can be seen within the four major areas that make up the creative industry, according to the Firjan study.

They are as follows: consumption (design, architecture, fashion and advertising and marketing), culture (heritage and arts, music, performing arts and cultural expressions), media (editorial and audiovisual) and technology (research and development, biotechnology and information technology and communication).

In consumption, the number of jobs increased from 419,900 in 2019 to 439,500 in 2020, an increase of 4.7% (19,600 more jobs). It is the biggest growth among the areas covered by the survey.

Within consumption, the main push came from advertising and marketing. The segment opened 24 thousand jobs from 2019 to 2020.

Fashion, on the other hand, was the negative highlight in consumption. The segment lost 4,337 jobs in the initial year of the pandemic.

The area identified as technology, in turn, registered growth of 3.6% in the number of jobs. The number of contracts increased from 338.1 thousand to 350.3 thousand – an increase of 12.3 thousand.

Within technology, the ICT (information and communication technology) segment registered an increase of 8,568 vacancies, and the biotechnology segment opened 3,164.

Research and development, the other branch that integrates this category, generated 545 jobs.

In the culture area, which is more dependent on the movement of consumers, there was a loss of 8,257 contracts from 2019 to 2020. The total number dropped from 68.4 thousand to 60.2 thousand, a decrease of 12.1%, the highest among large groups of the creative industry.

The four segments that make up culture had vacancies: heritage and arts (minus 2,406), cultural expressions (minus 2,337), performing arts (minus 1,922) and music (minus 1,592).

Media, the fourth area evaluated in the creative industry, lost 7,284 jobs from 2019 to 2020. The total number dropped 7.9%, from 92.6 thousand to 85.3 thousand.

The two segments that make up the media closed positions: editorial (minus 4,865) and audiovisual (2,419).

“Despite the resilience observed in the aggregated data, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the different areas of the creative industry was quite heterogeneous”, states the study.

“Segments dedicated to the arts (such as theater shows) and those more dependent on physical interaction with the public (such as those linked to bars and restaurants) suffered considerable impacts; on the other hand, more technology-intensive areas were not as affected. and presented, in some cases, advances compared to 2019”, he adds.

Share in GDP goes to 2.91%

The study indicates that the 935,300 creative professionals formally employed in 2020 corresponded to 70% of the entire workforce in the Brazilian metalworking industry.

The new edition of the survey also brings data from 2017. In that year, the creative industry totaled 837,200 workers in Brazil. In other words, the total number of vacancies grew by 11.7% in 2020, compared to 2017.

In the initial year of the pandemic, creative GDP (Gross Domestic Product) dropped 0.8%, says Firjan. The decline was less intense than that seen in the Brazilian economy in general terms (-3.6%).

The creative industry’s share in the national GDP reached 2.91% in 2020. It is the largest share since the beginning of the available historical series, with data from 2004 onwards.

This number also suggests that the creative sector felt the crisis to a lesser extent than other economic sectors.

Creative GDP totaled BRL 217.4 billion in 2020. The value, according to the study, is comparable to the production of civil construction and higher than that of the mineral extractive sector.