In a scenario of less restrictions on economic activities, the unemployment rate in Brazil dropped to 12.6% in the third quarter of 2021. Even with the fall, driven by work in the informal sector, the country still registered 13.5 million unemployed between the months of July and September.
The data were released this Tuesday (30) by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).
The unemployment rate was 14.2% in the second quarter of 2021 and 14.9% in the third of 2020. The results are part of the Pnad Contínua (National Survey by Continuous Household Sample).
According to official statistics, a person is unemployed when he doesn’t have a job and keeps looking for new professional opportunities.
The unemployment rate estimated by the IBGE (12.6%) was close to financial market expectations. Analysts consulted by Bloomberg agency projected an indicator of 12.7%.
The drop in unemployment was influenced by the increase in the employed population. This portion, which had some type of work, was estimated at 93 million people.
It grew 4% (3.6 million more people) compared to the previous quarter and 11.4% (9.5 million more people) compared to the same quarter of 2020.
“In the third quarter, there was a significant process of growth in occupation, even allowing for the reduction of the unemployed population, which seeks work, as well as of the population that was out of the workforce”, assesses the work and income coordinator of the IBGE, Adriana Beringuy.
According to the institute, the increase in occupation is mainly related to the informal sector.
Of the 3.6 million more people in the employed population, compared to the immediately previous quarter, around 54% (1.9 million) worked without a formal contract or CNPJ. In other words, informality accounted for more than half of the new vacancies.
The reflection of the table is the decline in the average income of the employed population. This indicates that entry into the labor market has been marked by lower wages.
The usual real income was estimated by IBGE at R$2,459. It is the lowest mark for the third quarter since the beginning of the historical series, in 2012. It means a decrease of 11.1% compared to the same period last year (R$2,766).
The drop in income also reflects the escalation of inflation, as the institute’s calculations consider the price increase.
The numbers released this Tuesday already incorporate a review made by the IBGE in the entire historical series of Pnad Contínua. The reweighting of the results was necessary due to the effects of the pandemic on the information collection process.
The arrival of Covid-19 caused restrictions to travel and made the agency suspend PNAD face-to-face interviews as of the second quarter of 2020. Thus, data collection started to be done by telephone.
The change reduced the rate of use of the survey, as there were more difficulties in conducting the interviews —not all Brazilian families have access to telephones, for example.
According to the IBGE, this reduction was felt mainly in the younger groups of the population, which increased the proportion of elderly people in the sample.
According to the institute, based on the reweighting of the series, which takes into account characteristics of age and sex, any distortions are corrected, and the most recent estimates can be compared to previous ones.
“What the weighting brings is the improvement in estimates, as we manage to recompose the population by sex and age group”, reported Luna Hidalgo, an analyst at IBGE.
The unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2021, for example, was initially estimated at 14.1%. With the review, it rose to 14.2%.
The number of unemployed persons, in the same period, rose from 14.4 million to 14.8 million. By the revised series, the unemployed population peaked at 15.3 million in the first quarter of 2021.
The pandemic, signals the IBGE, caused similar challenges for research institutes in other countries. With the advance of vaccination against Covid-19 and the lesser restrictions, the Brazilian agency has resumed part of its face-to-face activities in recent months.
Unemployment at a high level by historical standards worries analysts, even more in a period of high inflation like the current one.
Together, the difficulties in the labor market and rising prices play against household consumption, one of the engines of growth in the country.
In this context, projections for the performance of economic activity in 2022 have been revised downwards.
There are already financial institutions, including large banks such as Itaú and Credit Suisse, forecasting a recession next year — that is, a drop in GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
The worsening of expectations is related to a combination of factors, ranging from inflationary pressure and rising interest rates to fiscal uncertainties and the political crisis involving the federal government.
According to analysts, the weakness of the economy as a whole puts in check the incipient improvement of the labor market.
“As much as it has fallen, unemployment is still at a very high level. The employment picture in Brazil remains poor, despite the improvement in the last quarter”, defines economist Cristiane Quartaroli, from Banco Ourinvest.
Economist Ana Beatriz Moraes, a professor at Ibmec-RJ, has a similar opinion. Even with the reduction in unemployment, entry into the labor market remains difficult, according to her. A sign of this is that more people resort to modalities such as self-employment, recalls the teacher.
According to the IBGE, the number of self-employed professionals in Brazil once again broke a record. The share of self-employed workers was estimated at 25.5 million people. It means growth of 3.3% (817 thousand more) compared to the previous quarter and 18.4% (4 million more) in the annual cut.
As shown in a recent report from sheet, Brazil is at risk of embittering a decade with high unemployment, returning to full employment only in 2026.
The conclusion comes from an analysis by economist Bráulio Borges, from FGV Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation).
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