Precariousness weakens effects of increased occupation – 03/29/2023 – Cida Bento

Faced with positive and generalist headlines from the media celebrating the improvement in the labor market, it is essential not to forget the perverse inequality that structures our society. Even though statistics indicate an increase in employment among the economically active population, it is not possible to say that the labor market is prospering, as high job insecurity remains persistent.

An indicator used by Radar Ceert, for example, proves the enormous precariousness of work, which, like the unemployment rate, affects mainly women and black people and explains that racism is one of the main causes of inequalities in the country, highlighting there are the precarious working conditions in which black Brazilians live.

Related to low wages, insufficient hours worked, informality, intermittency, lack of stability and no guarantee of rights, the job insecurity rate reached 51.6% in the last quarter of 2022, pointing to a relative growth of 9.8% since the last quarter of 2015 (Continuous PNAD).

This analysis reveals the other side of the story told by indicators that point to an improvement in labor market conditions, such as a reduction from 9.1% to 7.9% in the unemployment rate, in addition to an increase in the number of employed persons by about 7 million people between 2015 and 2022.

The other side of this story is that the number of people in precarious jobs also increased by 7.9 million, surpassing the increase in the total number of employed people, and, therefore, the conditions of thousands of occupations are more fragile and deteriorated.

Brazilian youth, now mostly black (61%), are increasingly affected by unstable and precarious work, with delivery and transport apps as their only means of support.

We can see this reality by looking at the profile of the cyclist couriers: male, young, black, between 18 and 22 years old and with high school education, who was unemployed and now works every day of the week, without social protection and exhausting hours. , according to research by Aliança Bike (2019). In other words, it is urgent that we build the process of regulation and regulation for workers on application platforms.

It is true that the increase in the precariousness rate affects all population groups, but the most affected are women and black people, with proportions of 54.4% and 59.7% of people employed in precarious conditions, compared to 49 .5% and 41.7% of men and white people, according to data from the fourth quarter of 2022.

Black women in precarious occupations represent 63.1%, and white men in the same condition are 39.3% of these vacancies. On the other hand, they are a minority in the technological area, because, although they represent 28% of Brazilian society, 11% work in technology companies and only 3% attend computer engineering courses (Report 2022 – PretaLab).

In these times of renewal that we are experiencing, there is an urgent need for concertation and the implementation of public, private and union policies to face this gender and racial inequality, ranging from valuing the minimum wage to resuming and strengthening social protection networks, collective bargaining and instances of representation of working people.

Above all, it is another concept of growth and economic development guided by socio-environmental care and equity as a prerequisite for investments in the labor market, in the processes of generating quality jobs and in the innovations that need to be implemented.

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