RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In the first quarter of 2021, 3 in 10 Brazilian households lived with no income from work, according to a study by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) based on microdata from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Continuous PNAD), calculated by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Due to the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, the proportion of households with no work income jumped from 25.09% in the first quarter of 2020 to 31.56% in the second quarter, with a slight decrease to 31.24% in the third quarter.
In the fourth quarter last year, this share of households with no income from the labor market remained high at 29.01%. With the second wave of the pandemic, the total number of households with no labor income rose to 29.34% in the first quarter of 2021.
The result reinforces “the slow recovery of occupation level among lower-income families to pre-pandemic levels,” pointed out Sandro Sacchet de Carvalho, Research and Planning technician at IPEA’s Department of Macroeconomic Studies and Policies (DiMAC), in the “Conjuncture Report” released on Wednesday, June 16.
The proportion of Brazilian families in the lowest income bracket, earning less than R$1,650.50 (US$326.46) per month, increased from 25.84% in the first quarter of 2020 to 25.96% in the first quarter of 2021.
In the highest income bracket, earning more than R$16,509.66 per month, the share of households included fell from 2.69% to 2.42% in the period.