Brazil has more than 100 million workers employed for the first time

Advances

Unemployment of 7.6% is the lowest since 2015, shows IBGE

Brazil surpassed the mark of 100 million employed workers since the beginning of the historical series of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad Contínua) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The survey, released this Thursday (30), shows a record number of 100.2 million people, an increase of 862 thousand in the last three months.

The unemployment rate in the quarter from August to October was 7.6%, the lowest since the quarter ended in February 2015, when it was 7.5%. The index represents a decline of 0.3 percentage points compared to the average from May to July 2023. In the same period last year, the rate was 8.3%.

The number of unemployed people fell by 261 thousand, reaching 8.3 million people, a decrease of 3.6% compared to the previous quarter.

Signed portfolio

The number of employees with a work contract in the private sector (excluding domestic workers) reached 37.4 million, the highest since January 2015. This figure represents a positive balance of 587 thousand people (+1.6%) with a formal contract in the last three months.

The number of self-employed workers reached 25.6 million people, an increase of 317 thousand (+1.3%) in the same comparison.

“This shows that both employees and self-employed workers contributed to the expansion of employment in the quarter”, explains Adriana Beringuy, coordinator of Household Sample Surveys at IBGE.

The informality rate was 39.1% of the employed population (or 39.2 million informal workers), stable compared to last year.

Performance

The worker’s real average income was estimated at R$2,999, an increase of 1.7% compared to the quarter ended in June and 3.9% compared to the same period last year. It is the highest figure since the quarter ended in July 2020 (R$3,152).

The IBGE attributes this evolution to the continued expansion among employed people with a formal contract, an occupation that normally has higher incomes. “The reading we can make is that there is a quantitative gain, with an increase in the employed population, and a qualitative one, with an increase in average income”, says Beringuy.

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