Brazil is creating jobs, but industry still lagging

In a sign of economic recovery, Brazil rounded off 2018 with a positive balance of 529,500 new formal jobs, the first good result in four years, according to data from the Ministry of Economy released on Wednesday. The recovery, however, is not evenly distributed across economic sectors.

During the year, services boasted the best performance, creating 398,600 new jobs. The only sector that showed a reduction was public administration, which shrank by 4,100 jobs. However, the processing industry was more or less stagnant, with 2,600 new jobs—a growth of only 0.04 percent. This could be...