Sixty-five Percent of Brazil’s Unemployed Have Been out of Work More than One Year

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Six out of every ten people unemployed in Brazil (65 percent) have been out of work for more than a year, according to the Labor Practices survey, commissioned by ALELO (company focused on workers’ quality of life) and conducted by the IPSOS Institute for market studies.

According to the study, those most affected by the delay are the elderly: in the group of people aged between 55 and 65 years, 49 percent have been seeking a new position for more than five years and 31 percent, between two and five years.

Among the elders, 28 percent mentioned their age as the main obstacle to returning to the job market. Among the youngest, the main difficulty mentioned (36 percent) is the lack of available positions.

“The search for a new job is recurrent for 76 percent of all the unemployed interviewed in the survey, but this search decreases as age increases. The survey showed that among people between 55 and 65 years of age, 56 percent of them are not looking for a new occupation,” said ALELO’s director of People and Innovation, Soraya Bahde, in the release of the study.

According to the survey, virtually half of those interviewed said they do parallel work without formal employment contracts, in order to support themselves. The main areas mentioned were home cleaning services, catalog product resellers, handicrafts, sweets and snacks, and general household services. Among unemployed, 42 percent believe that entrepreneurship may be the way to return to the market.

According to the survey, 39 percent of those surveyed said they had been fired due to staff cutbacks and 20 percent said they had resigned for personal reasons. In the gender category, dismissal due to job cuts was more frequently mentioned by men (50 percent) and resignation for personal reasons by women (25 percent).

Methodology

The Labor Practices survey, commissioned by the company ALELO, interviewed 2,333 people through an online survey. Among these, there are 1,518 employees, 468 unemployed and 347 self-employed. The margin of error is two percentage points plus or minus.

The demographic split of those consulted was 54 percent men and 46 percent women, aged between 18 and 65 years. The study was conducted in the metropolitan regions of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiânia, Brasília, Florianópolis, Belém, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador, and Fortaleza.

Source: Estadão Conteúdo