The resilience of the Brazilian labor market — which economists and financial analysts spoke so much about at the beginning of this year, predicting that the pace of job creation would slow down due to monetary tightening and the slow recovery of income — appears stronger than expected.
New data from the Labor Ministry released on Monday afternoon shows that the country opened almost 212,000 formal jobs in September, well above the projections made by analysts polled by Bloomberg or real-time news service Broadcast — which hovered between 202,000 and 206,000.
Between January and September, the economy added nearly 1.6 million new formal jobs — to a total of over 44 million. Since August 2020, when Brazil was facing the worst of the pandemic downturn, over 7 million new formal jobs have been created.
All 27 states — as well as all the five sectors monitored by the Labor Ministry — saw more jobs being created than nixed during the month of September. The services sector continues to be the leading employer, with over 98,000 jobs created in September.
Throughout the year, the services sector also leads, accounting for 54.4 percent (or 870,320) of all new positions opened in 2023. Two groups of activities were responsible for most of the opportunities: public administration, education, health, and social services, with more than 300,000 jobs; information, financial, and real estate services, with just over 293,000 positions.
During a live broadcast to release the data, Labor Minister Luiz Marinho said the government is reviewing its net growth projection of 2 million formal positions this year to just over 1.9 million, saying this forecast is based not only on the perspective of a drop in the country’s benchmark interest rate but also in new vacancies being created by the new infrastructure and housing programs. Part of the 28,359 vacancies opened by the construction sector in September would already come from infrastructure works, according to him.
These projections, however, are much higher than market expectations, which, according to a poll by Broadcast, point to a maximum of 1.7 million new formal jobs throughout 2023.The average admission salary fell slightly (BRL 8.07) in September compared to August, to BRL 2,032, but is still higher than in the same month last year (BRL 2,018).
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