Employment in the public sector: record with vacancies without a formal contract – 02/13/2023 – Market

The number of employees in the public sector hit a record with the boost in the opening of job openings without a formal contract in Brazil, indicate data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

This movement has been driven by the municipalities, which, according to economists, are trying to recompose the staff without generating permanent pressure on public finances.

With the fiscal restrictions, the opening of temporary positions, without a formal contract and outside the statutory regime, is seen as a way out to face the demands in areas such as education and health after the pandemic.

“The fiscal issue is not exclusive to the federal government. Municipalities and states also feel this”, says economist Rodolpho Tobler, a researcher at FGV Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation).

“There is a demand from society for services such as education and health, and governments often have nowhere to take them from. So, they go for lower cost options”, he adds.

In the quarter up to November 2022, the total number of employees in the public sector was estimated by the IBGE at almost 12.3 million in the country.

It is the highest level of the comparable historical series of the Continuous PNAD (Continuous National Household Sample Survey), which began in 2012.

In the same quarter of 2021, the number was 11.3 million. That is, there was an increase of 8.8% (993 thousand more) in one year.

Pnad divides civil servants at the municipal, state and federal levels into three categories: military and statutory, formally employed and undocumented.

In the quarter up to November, servers without a wallet reached 3.1 million, a record for the historical series. The number means an increase of 28.4%, or 692 thousand more, compared to the same period in 2021.

The military and statutory, in turn, reached 7.8 million until November last year. The advance was smaller, 2.3% (or 177 thousand more), compared to the same period in 2021.

Employees with a formal contract in the public sector totaled 1.4 million by November 2022. The contingent rose 10% in the year (124 thousand more), an increase that was also lower than that of those without a formal contract.

Servers that are not CLT, nor statutory or military, fill different occupations. This group includes employees hired on a temporary basis, consultants and interns, as well as occupants of elected or commissioned positions.

According to economists, it is not possible to equate them to informal workers who work without a formal contract or CNPJ in the private sector.

These civil servants, even without a CLT registration, may have some type of safeguard and benefits, including a contract with the employer (government), 13th salary and proportional vacations. These are prerogatives that are not part of the routine of informal workers in the private sector.

“As much as these public sector employees don’t have a formal contract, there is a structure behind their work”, says Tobler.

Adriana Beringuy, coordinator of Household Sample Surveys at the IBGE, emphasizes that the category “has a strong seasonal component”.

In the area of ​​education, recalls the researcher, professionals are usually hired at the beginning of the school year and dismissed at the end of the season.

“The growth of unregistered employees in the public sector in the data from the last quarters of the Pnad Contínua has been occurring mainly in the segments of education and health”, says Beringuy.

high in city halls

A survey by economist Bruno Imaizumi, from LCA Consultores, provides details on the situation based on PNAD microdata for the quarter up to September 2022, the most recent one with these statistics available.

At the time, the number of public sector employees without a formal contract was approaching 3.1 million. Compared to the same quarter of 2021, there was an increase of 799.4 thousand jobs.

Of this amount, 605.8 thousand (75.8%) came from municipalities, according to the survey. “It is a scenario linked to cost control”, says Imaizumi.

“There is a need to recompose staff, but city halls do not want to put so much pressure on public accounts, which are already under pressure.”

The survey also points out the occupations that generated the most vacancies among public servants in the quarter up to September 2022, compared to the same period in 2021. This cut analyzes the three spheres of government (municipal, state and federal).

The highlights were interior cleaning workers for buildings, offices and others (117.7 thousand more), teachers’ assistants (84.3 thousand), general clerks (75 thousand), elementary school teachers (74.7 thousand) and market research interviewers (66.3 thousand).

Then came pre-school teachers (60.1 thousand more), child caretakers (44 thousand) and secondary school teachers (37.4 thousand).

“People lost income in the pandemic. When that happens, there is a migration from private to public education”, says Imaizumi.

He points out that, although the health crisis has shown signs of a truce, there is a demand for public health services, which tends to be intensified by the aging of the population.

The economist adds that the return of face-to-face activities also contributed to hiring servers. The realization of the Demographic Census by the IBGE, points out the economist, stimulated the opening of temporary vacancies without formal papers for survey interviewers.

“Temporary hires represent precariousness for workers, who are always insecure about the continuity of their employment”, says Professor Hilton P. Silva, coordinator at Abrasco (Brazilian Association of Collective Health).

Silva assesses that the lack of permanent hires harms users of the health system, who often lose connection with professionals.

The coordinator of Insper’s Center for Management and Public Policies, Andre Luiz Marques, considers that it is necessary to maintain the possibility of temporary hiring in the public service, but that the modality must be used correctly.

“The municipality may have occasional problems with a lack of teachers or it may be undergoing a change in the network and it is not necessary to make a definitive hiring. However, when the public entity fails to make a necessary tender, it is using temporary hiring in a mistaken.”

Complementary Law 173, of 2020, allowed states and municipalities to receive federal resources to combat the pandemic. On the other hand, there were restrictions on increasing expenses until December 2021, including a limitation on hiring and a ban on readjustments for public servants.

This damming would also have stimulated the recent resumption of occupation in the public sector, according to specialists.

Under the justification of agility, hiring temporary workers opens up the possibility of allocating people to positions that should be permanent, says Amauri Fragoso de Medeiros, from Andes-SN (National Union of Teachers of Higher Education Institutions).

He assesses that to solve problems of lack of resources of the Union, states and municipalities it is necessary to seek a tax reform. “And that it be guided by the principles foreseen in the Constitution, so that the greater the condition of contributing to the financing of the State, the greater the taxation.”