Rio de Janeiro State Has Lost Over 500,000 Jobs Since 2014

By Nelson Belen, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the latest jobs report from Brazil’s Ministry of Labor, Rio de Janeiro State has lost approximately 523,000 jobs since 2014, equivalent to the amount of formal jobs in the states of Acre, Amazonas, Roraima, and Amapá combined.

In 2014, before the start of the economic crisis that eventually put a stranglehold on Brazil, the state of Rio had almost four million people formally employed (working with a contract). Since then, the number of formal jobs has fallen thirteen percent.

In 2015, Rio de Janeiro eliminated 183,000 jobs. The rate of disappearing jobs peaked the following year, when approximately 240,000 jobs disappeared in 2016. In 2017, the number of jobs eliminated in the state fell to 92,000.

However, with Rio losing less than half as many jobs in 2017 as it did in 2016, and with encouraging figures in 2018 so far, some experts believe that the worst may be over.

In the first half of 2018, almost 400,000 new jobs were created in Brazil. During that time, the state of Rio lost seven thousand jobs.

“That’s bad news because we still lost seven thousand jobs. But in 2016, there were more than 100,000 jobs lost [in that same period],” exclaimed UFRJ economist Mauro Osório to Globo news.

“So, in fact, the state of Rio de Janeiro has stopped worsening and there are some municipalities that are showing positive employment data.”

According to the Labor Ministry’s report, in the first half of 2018, the service and construction sectors saw the greatest job loss during that time with companies in those sectors firing more workers than they hired.

Through June, the services sector lost fifteen thousand jobs, while the construction sector lost five thousand jobs.