Brazil: Number of informal workers hits record

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the number of informal workers hit a record despite the decrease in the country’s unemployment rate. There are about 39.3 million citizens in informality, which represents 40%.

The occupied population also broke records in the last quarter data released by the Institute. There are more than 98 million employed Brazilians. However, with the advance of informal jobs, precariousness is present.

Informal workers work without a signed contract, self-employed employers without a CNPJ (Legal Entity Tax Identification Number), and auxiliary family workers.

THE SERVICE SECTOR WAS MOST IMPACTED

According to researcher Adriana Beringuy for the website g1, this significant number of informal workers is due to the service sector, which was strongly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, in which informality is more prevalent. She highlights the food and beauty sector, as well as civil construction.

The portion of the population without a signed labor contract also hit a record in the private sector. According to the data, there was an increase of 6.8%, totaling 13 million people. Still, within this scenario, the number of self-employed people also grew: 25.7 million.

Concerning domestic workers, there was an increase of 4.3%, corresponding to 180,000 people. With this increase, this category is made up of 4.4 million Brazilians.

UNEMPLOYMENT IS STILL HIGH

Based on the IBGE survey, unemployment has reached 10.1 million people in the country. It is the lowest level for a second quarter since 2015.

Moreover, in the previous survey, the percentage of unemployed was 9.8%. In 2014, considered the historical minimum, the unemployment rate was 6.5%. In other words, the data show that, despite the drop in this quarter, the number of unemployed people is still alarming.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

Check out the evolution of the unemployment rate in Brazil since last year, per quarter analyzed.

• April/May/June (2021): 14.2%;
• July/August/September (2021): 12.6%;
• October/November/December (2021): 11.1%;
• January/February/March (2022): 11.1%;
• April/May/June (2022): 9.3%.

The data are from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad).