Brazil has two employment indicators telling different stories – Central Bank president

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After Economy Minister Paulo Guedes criticized the IBGE, Central Bank President Roberto Campos Neto joined the discussion and said there is a “big debate” over which indicator to use to measure Brazil’s employment level.

In an online Bradesco BBI event, he presented data from IBGE’s PNAD, which measures the employed population, and the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (CAGED), which shows the formal market’s behavior. “We have two employment indicators in Brazil telling different stories. I believe we are closer to the CAGED indicators than to the PNAD.”

In late July, the IBGE released Brazil’s unemployment rate at 14.6% in the quarter ending in May, with 14.8 million unemployed. This led Economy Minister Paulo Guedes to attack the agency, which reports to his portfolio, and its methodology to portray the labor market – he said that IBGE lives in the “stone age.”

Guedes, as well as Campos Neto, prefers the more “positive” CAGED figures, which, in its latest release, showed that Brazil created 1.5 million jobs in the first semester. At the event, Campos Neto also said that consumer confidence has not returned to previous levels for lower classes.

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