Covid-19 makes life even harder for Brazilian interns

Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Brazil, the situation for young professionals joining the job market was already far from ideal. After emerging from what was then the worst recession in Brazil’s history, the country was grappling with double-digit unemployment levels and a growing amount of unregistered informal labor. The coronavirus crisis has come along to make this outlook even worse, while also dismantling one of the most common entryways into professional careers: paid internships.

The São Paulo Company-School Integration Center (CIEE São Paulo), a non-profit organization focused on student internships, noted a fall of nearly 36 percent in internship vacancies for the first half of 2020. When analyzing the data through a regional lens, the plunge in opportunities hit 42 percent in Brazil’s Center-West region.

A tentative recuperation has been underway since, but results for August are set to remain 40 percent below pre-pandemic levels, according to CIEE’s national operations superintendent, Marcelo Gallo. “We are seeing a recovery since June,...