How the coronavirus is making Brazil’s unemployment jump. The attempt to recreate the Amazon Fund. And why support to Jair Bolsonaro is so resilient.
Unemployment: Coronavirus kills more jobs than past recessions
One day after the Economy Ministry released data on formal jobs, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics published new unemployment figures — including workers on the informal job market, a large chunk of the Brazilian workforce. The rate of Brazilians without a job has gone from 11.2 to 12.6 percent between January and April. According to Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s biggest private bank, the unemployment rate would be around 16 percent already if more people were actively looking for work — something that the pandemic has halted.
- A total of 4.9 million people lost their job, and 3.7 million of them were from the informal market.
- The average salary of the Brazilian worker has gone up between March and April, as positions that are informal or required less-skilled workers were the first to disappear.
Why it matters. Brazil’s 2014-2016 recession, the worst on record until the coronavirus, destroyed 2.5 million jobs in two years. This crisis has scrapped more jobs in just two months.
Not only the virus. The...