Under the effect of the crisis generated by Covid-19, the percentage of Brazilians with work income dropped in 2020 to the lowest level of a historical series started in 2012.
The result was released this Friday (19) by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).
According to the institute, the number of people who had work income dropped in 2020 to 84.7 million in the country. The amount was equivalent to 40.1% of the resident population.
The percentage is the lowest since the beginning of the series with an annual cut. In 2019, pre-pandemic period, the mark had been 44.3% (or 92.8 million).
The data are part of the Continuous Pnad 2020 survey: Income from all sources.
The survey analyzes resources obtained by the population from different means —professional activities, programs and social benefits, among others.
According to IBGE, the 2020 framework reflects the damage caused by the pandemic in the labor market. This was because the arrival of the coronavirus, in the first quarter of last year, forced restrictions on economic activities in states and municipalities.
The business stoppage caused workers to lose income from their activities, whether formal or informal.
Given the difficulties imposed by Covid-19, more people began to depend on income transfer programs, such as the emergency assistance. IBGE numbers also illustrate this picture.
In 2020, the percentage of Brazilians with income from other sources rose to 28.3% (59.7 million). It is the highest rate in the historical series. In 2019, the percentage was 23.6% (49.5 million).
Income from other sources is characterized by considering different types of resources.
In 2020, the main ones were those described as other income, which include social programs such as emergency aid, from the federal government, in addition to initiatives launched by city halls or municipalities.
Other sources also include pensions and pensions. Between 2012 and 2019, they had the greatest weight among the components of other sources, but were surpassed by other incomes in 2020. Emergency aid helps explain this.
“The job market had problems last year. The mattress created by the emergency aid held up income a little. The weight of other sources increased,” explained Alessandra Brito, an analyst at IBGE.
Northeast has a higher percentage of other sources
Pnad also brings the clipping of the five major Brazilian regions. The Northeast is the only one where the percentage of the population with income from other sources surpassed that of work income.
According to IBGE, this situation also reflects the great weight that programs such as emergency aid had last year.
In the Northeast, the percentage of the population with income from other sources rose to 32.8% in 2020. It is the highest in the country.
Meanwhile, the percentage of the northeastern population with income from work dropped to 32.3%. It is the lowest in Brazil.
“The Northeast was the first large region in the country, in the entire series of Pnad ContÃnua, to record a percentage of people with work income (32.3%) lower than that of people who received income from other sources (32.8% )”, states the IBGE.
The South, on the other hand, returned to register, in 2020, the largest portion of the population with earnings from professional activities.
The percentage of people with income from work was 46% in the region. On the other hand, that from other sources was estimated in the South at 26.8%.
In the Southeast, the percentage of the population with income from work was 43.3%. Already the one from other sources reached 27.2%.
The Midwest, in turn, had a percentage of 44.1% in relation to income from work. The percentage from other sources was 23.9%.
In the North, these percentages were estimated at 36.2% and 26%, respectively.
The IBGE states that the survey released this Friday already incorporates a reweighting made in the numbers of the historical series. This review was necessary given the changes imposed by Covid-19 in the information collection process.
Over the past year, the institute had to suspend Pnad face-to-face interviews and start collecting data by telephone. The change reduced the rate of use of the sample of respondents.
The reweighting, indicates the institute, guarantees the comparison of the most recent information with the results of previous years.
The IBGE study also points out that, in 2020, people who were part of the portion of 1% of the population with the highest income in the country had a per capita household income of R$ 15,816. This value is equivalent to 34.9 times the income of half of the population with the smallest earnings (R$ 453).
The difference was even greater. In 2019, there was the peak of the time series (40 times).
The Gini index, which measures the concentration of income and inequality, dropped from 0.544 in 2019 to 0.524 in 2020. It was the biggest drop in the historical series of the indicator.
The closer to zero, the greater the income equality among the country’s population. IBGE, however, suggests caution when interpreting the result.
With the onset of the pandemic, professionals with lower income from work were hit hard and left the market. Resources from programs such as emergency aid compensated for the loss of those earning less, making the distribution less unequal.
In other words, behind the result, there was no improvement in labor market conditions.
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