IBGE: Unemployment in Pandemic Breaks Record, Affects Over 14 Million Brazilians

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Unemployment in the pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus hit a record in the penultimate week of September, affecting over 14 million Brazilians. This is pointed out by the results released on Friday, October 16th, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

According to the study report, between May and September over 4.1 million Brazilians joined the unemployment line, which corresponds to a 43 percent increase in the number of unemployed in the country in five months.

As a result, the unemployment rate rose from 10.5 to 14.4 percent, the highest of the entire period researched. Other highlights of the report are:

Among the regions, the Northeast presented the highest increase in the number of unemployed, 69 percent; the Southeast, the most populated region, concentrates some 45 percent of the unemployed in the country.

The employed population remained stable during most of the researched period. The flexibilization of social isolation was responsible for pressuring the labor market.

Informality dropped in the country, pointing to stagnation in the labor market. The number of workers removed because of social isolation fell by 83.9 percent in five months.

The research was conducted between September 20th and 26th suing the PNAD Covid19 Survey to determine the impacts of the pandemic on the labor market and to quantify people with symptoms associated with influenza syndrome in Brazil. This was the latest edition of the weekly research.

Although it also assesses the labor market, the PNAD Covid19 is not comparable to the Continuous PNAD data, which is used as the official unemployment indicator in the country, due to its methodological features, which are distinct.

The most current data from the Continuous PNAD refer to July, when the country reached a record unemployment rate of 13.8 percent, with over 13.1 million Brazilians seeking an opportunity in the labor market.

The Northeast registered the highest unemployment rate among the regions

The majority of the 14 million unemployed in the penultimate week of September were concentrated in the Southeast Region (6.3 million), which is the most populous in the country.

However, it was in the Northeast Region that the highest number of unemployed was observed during the first five months of the pandemic – from 2.3 million in the first week of May to 3.9 million in the penultimate week of September, which corresponds to a 69 percent increase in the period.

The second highest increase was observed in the North Region, where the number of unemployed rose from 890,000 to 1.3 million – a 46.9 percent increase. In turn, the Southeast registered a 39.2 percent increase in the number of unemployed, rising from 4.3 to 6.3 million.

In the Midwest, the region with the lowest number of unemployed, the number of people looking for a job has increased from 819,000 to one million, which corresponds to a 25 percent increase. The South Region saw the number of unemployed rise from 1.3 million to 1.5 million, an increase of 16.5 percent.

Flexibilization of isolation pressures unemployment

When compared to the third week of September, the number of unemployed increased by approximately 700,000, raising the unemployment rate from 13.7 to 14.4 percent in one week. However, this increase is considered a statistical stability by the IBGE.

The research manager, Maria Lúcia Vieira, assessed that the progress of the flexibility of social isolation throughout Brazil is directly related to the rise in unemployment throughout the research period.

“Although unemployment data remained stable in the weekly comparison, they suggest that more people are pressuring the market in search of jobs, amid the relaxation of social distancing measures and the resumption of economic activities,” she pointed out.

The researcher stressed that the employed population in the labor market remained stable during most of the research, suggesting that recent unemployment was pressured by a greater number of people seeking employment, that is, there was no significant job cuts in the country.

“We had been observing positive variations over the past four weeks in the occupied population, albeit not significant. In the fourth week of September the variation was negative, but with no impact on the unemployment rate,” Maria Lúcia highlighted.

The number of people who were neither working nor looking for work in the country also remained stable – it stood at approximately 73.4 million people in the penultimate week of September against 76.2 million in the first week of May.

However, IBGE noted that the number of people outside the workforce who said they would like to work, although they were not looking for an occupation, dropped from 27.1 million in the first week of the survey to 25.6 million.

Informality has dropped

The survey showed that the number of casual workers fell by approximately 1.6 million between the start and the end of the research period. In the first week of May, the country had about 30 million casual workers, a number that dropped to 28.4 million in the penultimate week of September. As a result, the rate of informality in the country fell from 35.7 to 34.2 percent of the total workforce.

IBGE defines as casual workers professionals with no signed employment booklet (private sector employees and domestic workers), no CNPJ – National Registry of Legal Entities (employers and self-employed) and no fixed monthly salary.

The entity emphasizes that informality is the easiest way to access the labor market and therefore tends to be the first means of occupation to react to a financial crisis such as that caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In other words, the development of informality throughout the pandemic suggests that there is some stagnation of the labor market in the country.

Job removals dropped by 83.4 percent

Since the start of the study, the number of employees removed from work because of social distancing has been dropping every week. In the first week of May, there were 16.6 million people in this situation, a number that reached 2.7 million in the penultimate week of September, a drop of 83.4 percent in the period.

According to IBGE, this drop is directly related to the gradual progress of the flexibilization of the social distancing measures to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

IBGE pointed out that the number of people who claimed to remain in strict social isolation dropped by some 2.2 million between the third and fourth week of September alone. During the same period, the number of people who said they had not adopted any restrictive measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus rose by around 937,000.

The majority of the population said to have reduced contact with other people in the penultimate week of September, but continued to leave their homes or receive visits.

Source: G1