Brazil has 14.7% unemployment in the three months to April, says IBGE

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The unemployment rate in Brazil remained at 14.7% in the trimester ended April 2021, according to the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Continuous Pnad) released Wednesday, June 30 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Thus, this rate and the vacancy contingent maintain the record from the quarter ended in March, the highest in the series since 2012.

The result was in line with the Refinitiv consensus, whose projected median unemployment rate was 14.7% for the period, maintaining the March figure.

Compared with the January quarter (14.2%), the figure was 0.4 percentage points higher. Thus, the number of unemployed changed by 3.4%. There were 489,000 more unemployed, bringing the total number of job seekers in the country to 14.8 million.

Compared to the quarter that ended last April, which saw the first effects of the pandemic, the labor market is still recording employment losses, but at a slower pace.

“We are still registering important losses in the occupied population (-3.7%), but we have also had higher percentages, reaching 12% at the peak of the pandemic. We are therefore seeing a reduction in the pace of losses each quarter. Overall, however, we have 3.3 million fewer people in work since the beginning of the pandemic,” says analyst Adriana Beringuy.

Most indicators remained stable in the quarter ending April compared to the previous quarter. Among occupational groups, only the self-employed grew (up 2.3% or 537,000 people) to a total of 24.0 million. “This form of entry has a higher contingent now than in April 2020, and we are seeing a stronger response in self-employment than in registered jobs in the private sector,” adds Adriana Beringuy.

The number of registered workers in the private sector remained stable in the quarter at 29.6 million. However, there was a year-on-year decrease of 8.1% or 2.6 million fewer people. The number of employees in the private sector without a formal contract also remained stable (9.8 million). Compared to the same quarter last year, 374,000 fewer people were registered, a decrease of 3.7%.

The category of domestic workers was estimated at 5.0 million people. Compared to the same quarter last year, this group of workers decreased by 10.4%, with 572 thousand fewer people. The number of public sector workers remained stable at 11.8 million.

The number of employers with CNPJ (3.1 million) held the record of the lowest contingent of the historical series, which began in the fourth quarter of 2015 when they started to collect the differentiation of professionals with and without CNPJ.

The informality rate was 39.8% in the quarter ending April, representing 34.2 million people, with no significant change from the previous quarter (39.7%). A year ago, the contingent was 34.6 million with a rate of 38.8%. Informal workers are those without a signed contract (employees in the private sector or domestic workers), without a CNPJ (employer or self-employed), or workers without pay.

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