Uncertainty scenario puts Bahia and Pernambuco at the top of unemployment and informality

“I only earn the money from the odd jobs I do. I’m a bricklayer’s servant, I carry removal, I wash the car. That’s what you have.” This is the routine of Josenildo Pereira, 48, after losing his job at a bakery in 2017 in Recife.

With no steady job, he does what he can to pay the bills and take food home, where he lives with his wife and two children. “I live in a perrengue, not knowing what I have tomorrow,” he says.

Unemployment is a challenge in Brazil and, in particular, in recent years, in Pernambuco, which in 2021 had the highest unemployment rate in the country —19.3% of the working-age population, or 831,000 people. In 2022, the figure dropped to 13.6%, and today the state occupies the second position in this ranking.

Another indicator that reflects the scenario of uncertainty is that of the informal, a portion that works, for example, in the private sector without a formal contract or self-employed without registration of CNPJ.

According to August data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 52.9% of the employed population in Pernambuco is informal, equivalent to 1.9 million people.

With the state among the most affected, the problem has been frequently addressed by candidates for governor. In a circle of accusations, oppositionists such as Miguel Coelho (União Brasil), Raquel Lyra (PSDB) and Bolsonarista Anderson Ferreira (PL) focus their criticism on those in power, that is, Paulo Câmara, of the PSB, a party that has Danilo Cabral. as a candidate and who blames Jair Bolsonaro (PL) for the crisis.

The leader in the polls Marília Arraes (Solidariedade), in turn, attributes the scenario to both Bolsonaro and the PSB.

For economist Edgard Leonardo, the solution to fighting unemployment lies in reducing bureaucracy and attracting new companies. The arrival of a new business group to command the Southern Pier of the Atlântico Sul Shipyard, on the coast of Pernambuco, after the dismissal of 3,400 workers due to the reduction of activities to almost zero, is one of the bets for the economic recovery in the area.

“It is necessary to internalize development, with qualified roads and railways to generate employment and income throughout the entire state. It is also necessary to create conditions for unskilled workers in civil construction and agribusiness”, says the professor at the Center Tiradentes University (Unit-PE).

In addition to the local problems, highlights the economist, historical factors, such as the accentuated social inequality in the Northeast, contribute to the worsening of unemployment in the region.

The scenario is no different in Bahia, which in the first quarter of this year recorded, according to the IBGE, an unemployment rate of 15.5% among the economically active population, making it the holder of the highest unemployment rate in the country. The state also has one of the highest rates of discouraged people, with 612,000 people who could work, but gave up looking for a job in the face of difficulties in the market.

In state politics, the issue is dealt with in a push game. On the one hand, ACM Neto (União Brasil) and João Roma (PL), opposition candidates for governor, point out the Rui Costa (PT) government as responsible for the lack of new ventures that generate jobs. The PT candidate Jerônimo Rodrigues (PT) accuses Bolsonaro’s federal administration for the fall in the country’s economic activity and targets the municipal administration of Salvador, whose unemployment rate reaches 19% in the metropolitan region.

One of the main blows around the capital was the closing of the Ford plant in Camaçari, which resulted in the loss of around 4,600 jobs. The automaker unit had its activities closed in January 2021, when factories were also closed in Taubaté (SP) and Horizonte (CE).

Six years earlier, the closing of the São Roque do Paraguaçu shipyard, in Maragogipe (140 km from Salvador), made the Bahian Recôncavo go from heaven to hell with the loss of 6,500 jobs. The Bahia and federal governments promise new business for the Ford plant site and for the shipyard region.

While new posts do not appear, the number of informal workers increases. In Bahia, around 53% of the employed work on their own or without a formal contract, like André Rosendo, 17, who breaks stones with his father to make cobblestones in the rural area of ​​Coronel João Sá, in the north of the state.

In his final year of high school, he had plans to attend medical school and have a formal job. His immediate plans are more modest and look to football as an alternative: he wants to establish himself as a right-back for Frei Sergipano’s under-20 team to try to reach the professional team.

In contrast to the scenario that plagues several states, Santa Catarina has become an oasis of employment.

In 2018, while Brazil had an unemployment rate of 12.5%, the state had 7.4% of its workforce unemployed. Santa Catarina also earned 10% more than the national average — in the range that takes into account lower incomes, the local average was 30% higher than the Brazilian average.

Santa Catarina closed 2021 with an unemployment rate of 6.4%, compared to 13.8% across the country. Also noteworthy is the formalization rate: 79.4% of vacancies in the state have a formal contract, compared to 61.2% in Brazil.

“The difference is the balance between productive regional specializations, allowing for a greater supply of jobs”, says Paulo Bittencourt, chief economist at Fiesc (Federation of Industries of the State of SC).

Diversification, which makes cities like Chapecó, Criciúma, Blumenau, Jaraguá do Sul and Joinville independent industrial hubs, served to protect the state production chain from stronger impacts caused by Covid.

Florianópolis is a good example: with the tourism and services sectors in a downturn, the city has saved itself for having made, in recent years, efforts to attract innovation and technology companies.

From the second quarter of 2021, industrial expansion, in the wake of the economic reopening, gave hope to workers like Fabeline Almeida, 26, and Edivaldo Pereira, 31, born in Rio Branco (AC).

Encouraged by one of Pereira’s brothers, the couple took their three children, including a six-month-old baby, and migrated to the South in August last year. A year later, both are employed at Huvispan Têxtil, a company in Blumenau specialized in yarns.

“He [Pereira] I broke chestnuts, I sold soft drinks. We sold what we had, a motorcycle and a thousand bricks, to get here. I asked for donations on the way to pay for the girl’s porridge,” says Fabeline.

Today, she works in the cleaning sector at Huvispan, her first formal job. The husband works the morning shift as a machinery operator and takes care of the children while the wife is at work.

The textile area, which employed the couple from Acre, was the one that opened the most vacancies in Santa Catarina last semester in the industrial sector: 7,312 jobs, according to Fiesc.

Data from the Ministry of Labor and, again, from Fiesc show that the state offered 84,300 formal jobs in the first half of 2022. Almost half of them (43,300) are in the service sector, still in full recovery after the pandemic. Civil construction, driven by real estate expansion on the northern coast of the state, had 13,400 new jobs. The industry, on the other hand, opened 23,900 jobs.

For Lauro Maffei, a professor at the Santa Catarina Economic Studies Center at UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina), industrialization partly explains the high supply of formal jobs in the state, but he notes that the remuneration of these workers has not increased in the same proportion.

“Industry and commerce were organized in Santa Catarina so that there was little space for informal work. If on the one hand the worker is socially supported, on the other hand there is a flattening of remuneration. There are forms and forms of precarious work”, says Maffei.

According to Caged (General Registry of Employed and Unemployed), Santa Catarina accumulated 143,150 new formal jobs between June 2021 and June 2022, but 88% of them are below two minimum wages. This number is very close to the national average of 90%.

In June, for example, Santa Catarina opened 11,638 formal jobs with remuneration of up to two minimum wages. On the other hand, there was a deficit in the supply of vacancies in all ranges above this level, closing 1,962 jobs that paid more than two minimum wages.