55% of workers with disabilities are informal – 07/07/2023 – Market

Informality affects more than half of the population with disabilities who work in Brazil. This is what a survey released this Friday (7) by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) indicates.

According to the institute, the informality rate of people with some type of disability was 55% in 2022 – data was collected in the third quarter of last year.

In absolute terms, this means that, of the total of 4.6 million employed professionals with disabilities, almost 2.6 million resorted to vacancies without a formal contract or CNPJ as a way of entering the labor market at the time.

Among the employed population without disabilities, the informality rate was lower, estimated at 38.7%. The overall average was 39.4%.

The statistics are part of a module of the Pnad Contínua (Continuous National Household Sample Survey) on people with disabilities.

In addition to the labor market, the education area is also analyzed in the survey. There is no comparable historical series in the survey.

Self-employment becomes an alternative

According to the IBGE, 36.5% of those employed with disabilities were self-employed. It is the main form of insertion of this group in the job market.

Employees in the private sector (35.4% of the total) and employees in the public sector (11.5%) appear next.

Again, there are differences in relation to those employed without disabilities. In this group, the main form of insertion in the market is that of employees in the private sector (50.5% of the total).

Self-employment comes next (25.4%). Employees in the public sector (12.3%) appear later.

To calculate the percentage of self-employed workers, the IBGE counted professionals with and without CNPJ. That is, formal and informal.

Self-employment is more associated in Brazil with informal jobs, including the popular odd jobs. This would help explain the higher rate of informality for professionals with disabilities.

“Self-employment is much less for formalized self-employed workers and more for people who could not enter the labor market”, said Luciana Alves dos Santos, an analyst at the IBGE survey.

Historically, the informal sector is also seen as a source of lower wages, on average, compared to formal jobs.

Income is 30% lower

According to the IBGE, the average income from the main job of people with disabilities was R$ 1,860 in 2022. The value, already adjusted for inflation, was around 30% below the income of employed people without disabilities (R$ 2,690) .

The IBGE still points out differences in the unemployment rate. Among people with disabilities, the indicator was 9.1%. It was above both the level registered among people without disabilities (8.7%) and the general index (also 8.7%).

The labor force participation rate was 29.2% among people with disabilities. It is less than half the level found among people without disabilities (66.4%).

The participation rate measures the proportion of people aged 14 or over who are included in the labor force as employed (with some type of vacancy) or unemployed (looking for opportunities).

Depending on the economic context, it can function as a kind of thermometer of activity –or attractiveness– of the market.

Inequality, says the IBGE, persists even among people with higher education. In this cutout, the participation rate was 54.7% for the group with disabilities and 84.2% for those without disabilities.

The institute also pointed out that, among people with disabilities, the percentage of discouraged people in relation to the working-age population was 6%. The result far exceeds the proportion found among people without disabilities (3.7%).

From the perspective of official statistics, the discouraged represent workers who give up looking for vacancies because they think they will not have a chance.