Micro and Small Companies Create Over 70 Percent of new Jobs

By Xiu Ying, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The largest formal employers in the country are currently telemarketing, food, health management, and outsourcing services companies.

These figures result from a survey carried out by the Ministry of Economy at the request of the G1, which lists the companies with the highest number of formal employment contracts, based on the numbers of the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (CAGED).

The ranking leader is the call center company Atento, which in February totaled 73,822 employees. In second position is BRF, owner of Sadia and Perdigão, with 55,513 employees and in the third place is Vale, with 42,446.

Of the 50 companies on the list, eight register telemarketing as their main activity. Following are food industry (six), health (six), outsourcing services (five) and banks (four).
See ranking below:

1st ATENTO BRASIL 73,822 – Telemarketing
2nd BRF 55,513 – Food industry
3rd VALLEY 42.446 – Mining
4th DELIMA TRADE AND NAVIGATION 41,523 – Transports
5th ASSOCIAÇÃO PAULISTA PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA MEDICINA 35,906 – Health
6th SEARA FOODS 32,881 – Food industry
7th ITAU UNIBANCO 32,514 – Finance
8th LIQ CORP 31,057 – Telemarketing
9th EMPRESA BRASILEIRA DE SERVIÇOS HOSPITAL – EBSERH 29,886 – Health
10th ALMAVIVA DO BRASIL 27.734 – Telemarketing and IT

“The service sector is the highest employer in Brazil since it is usually more labor-intensive,” notes Bruno Ottoni, a researcher for Idados Consultants and the Brazilian Institute of Economy of Getúlio Vargas Foundation.

Service Sector Employs around 45 Percent

According to CAGED figures, the service sector currently employs around 45 percent of the total number of workers with a formal contract.

The researcher points out, however, that a considerable part of companies in the ranking, especially telemarketing, offer jobs that require less qualification and lower salaries, on average.

“This helps explain the current structure of wages in the country, where a large proportion of employees are in the lower salary range.

Over the past year, about 85 percent of jobs created under a formal contract offered up to only two minimum wages (the equivalent to US$ 470),” Ottoni notes.

Or in other words: Of every 200 workers hired in 2018, only one was set to earn more than R$ 10,000 (US$ 2,500) per month.

Companies in the ranking take up 2.7 percent of formal jobs in the country.

The 50 companies in the ranking employed a total of 1,053 million people in February under regular employment.

According to CAGED, this represents less than 3 percent of the country’s formal jobs stock, which in February totaled 38.6 million workers. In February 2018, there were 38,047 million formal jobs in Brazil.

During the pre-recession peak, at the end of 2014, the number reached 41 million.

Despite the importance of large companies in generating jobs in the country, figures from the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE) show that most of the country’s formal jobs are now concentrated in small and medium-sized companies.

Of the 173 thousand jobs created in Brazil in February 2019, 125.2 thousand were opened by small businesses and only 36.5 thousand by medium and large companies.

The other 11,400 jobs were generated in public administration.

In the first two months of the year, micro and small companies generated 189.5 thousand formal jobs, almost 17 times more than the balance accumulated by medium and large companies in the two months (11,312 jobs).