In June, the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (Caged) documented the establishment of 157,198 formal jobs in Brazil, as reported by the Ministry of Labor and Employment.
The figures from this month show 1,914,130 new employments, set against 1,756,932 job terminations.
However, this net gain was 44.8% lower than that of June 2022. It did, however, mark a 1.3% increase compared to May 2023.
The first half of the year saw the creation of 1,023,540 formal jobs, marking the lowest performance for this period since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, representing a 26.3% drop from last year.
The service sector recorded the highest job gains in the first half, with a net of 599,454 jobs.
Other sectors also reported a positive result: construction (169,531), industry (135,361), agriculture (86,837), and trade (32,367).
Meanwhile, unemployment insurance applications reached 602,804 in June, an 11.7% increase year-over-year.
Labor and Employment Minister Luiz Marinho attributes a portion of the hindrance in job creation to the Central Bank’s high basic interest rate (Selic) of 13.75%.
He speculated that, without this obstacle, the country could have generated an additional 42,000 jobs in June, reaching 200,000.
Furthermore, he argued that better central bank policy could have potentially led to 1.2 million or 1.15 million new jobs in the first half of the year.