In Brazil, 12 million young people neither study nor work

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The dream of Gabriela Novazzi, 27, is to get a job to give her 3-year-old son a better life. She has never had a steady job. She only works odd jobs at events. Since 2016, when she was forced to drop out of Physical Education college for financial reasons, Gabriela has neither studied nor worked. “It was my mother who used to help me with my studies, but she ran out of work and stopped paying for university,” she says.

With no experience, she is looking for any opportunity to enter the job market. But the search has not been easy. “Most companies require previous experience. It is difficult,” she says. Besides giving her son stability, Gabriela also dreams of finishing college. “It’s never too late to start over.”

Gabriela is part of a contingent of young people up to 29 years old that has grown a lot recently. They are the so-called “nem-nem” (“neither-nor”), a group of people who neither study nor work. According to the consultancy IDados, by the second quarter of 2021, this population would represent 30% of young people in this age group. It means 12.3 million people, a figure that exceeds the Belgian population.

The number of nannies had a jump during the pandemic in 2020. In 2021, the numbers dropped back a bit, but they are still above the pre-covid 19 levels. That’s almost 800,000 more people than in the first half of 2019 – when the group represented 27.9% of young people up to 29 years old. The problem is that since 2012 the number has been on the rise. At that time, the “nem-nem” were 25% of the age group (ten million).

Bottleneck

“This represents a huge inefficiency for the State since many of these people had a public investment behind them,” says the researcher from the consulting firm, Ana Tereza Pires, responsible for the survey. Besides the economic issue, there is also the individual side of each young person without experience.

Each year, she says, new students graduate and cannot be absorbed in the job market, which creates a pocket of “nem-nem”. They can’t study without a job or income, and many stop halfway, as in Gabriela’s case. According to Ana Tereza, finishing college during a recession can affect all of one’s professional life. Those who get a job may have flatter salaries than those who graduate during an economic boom.

Even for those who already got a job, the crisis is a problem because it punishes first the youngest, who have less experience and are paid less. Companies prefer to guarantee the permanence of specialized professionals who are difficult to hire. Not to mention that younger people represent a lower cost when it comes to termination.

Education and GDP

In the opinion of Trevisan Business School President Vandyck Silveira, the situation of young people is the result of a series of issues. The first is associated with education. “We have a very poor quality elementary and high school that doesn’t prepare students for anything. The problem, for him, is not for lack of investment, but the wrong investment.

Added to this is the low growth of the economy. Since 2013, the country has been unable to find the path of consistent recovery. Between 2017 and 2019, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by an average of 1.4% per year – a result far below capacity. “To employ all the young people entering the labor market, Brazil would need to grow at least 3% a year,” says Silveira. “We are definitely falling behind.”

For specialists, the growth of the “nem-nem” means loss of productivity and human capital. According to Marcelo Neri, director of FGV Social, Brazil had the largest contingent in the history of the youth “nem-nem” in the pandemic. But this percentage should fall by half by the end of the century due to demography. In his evaluation, this generation is sacrificing the present and the future. “Therefore, the future of the country is compromised by the lack of quantity and low-quality treatment given to youth.”

With information from Estadãobrazil