The situation of employment in Brazil has been improving, with the national unemployment rate falling below 10% after six years at double digits. In Q2'22 it reached 9.3% and then 8.9% in the quarter ended in August, as discussed in last week's IEDI Analysis (in Portuguese).

Today's Letter IEDI assesses the performance of private sector employment in Q2'22, emphasizing the jobs created by the industry. Compared to the same period of the previous year, there was a +10.9% rise in the number of employed people in the private sector as a whole, which meant an increase of almost 8.5 million people.

Among the main economic sectors, the exception was agriculture, which saw a decrease in occupation; the others had significant increases. In retail trade (+14.1%), services (+12.4%) and civil construction (+11.1%), the expansion was higher than the private sector’s aggregate. 

In the case of manufacturing, the dynamism was slightly lower than the total, but the registered rise of +9.8% remained significant, becoming more widespread across branches and more intense than in Q1'22 (+8.3%).

It is interesting to note that formal employment grew slightly more in both the private sector’s aggregate (+11.5%) and the industry (+10.5%). The industrial sector has contributed more than proportionally to the formalization of labor in the country.

This is because, in manufacturing, 69.5% of the total number of new jobs created between Q2'21 and Q2'22 were formal posts. This share was much lower in the other sectors in the same period: 33.1% in services, 38.9% in civil construction and 43.7% in retail. 

In relation to the same period of last year, occupation grew in 19 industrial branches in Q2'22, equivalent to 79% of the total branches, a fraction slightly higher than in Q1'22, when 17 branches (or 71% of the total industrial segments analyzed) showed an increase in employment.

The highlight in Q2'22 was the growth rate of employment in the manufacture of other transport equipment except motor vehicles (+31.7%) and of coke, petroleum products and biofuels (+31.4%). Among the largest reductions were printing and reproduction of recordings (-9.5%) and machines and equipment (-6.8%).

Regarding the classification of industrial branches by technological intensity, the high-tech group presented the first positive result in year-on-year comparisons since Q1'21. The other three groups also had increases in formal employment.

The average real income of those employed in the private sector presented, in Q2'22, its sixth consecutive drop (-2.7%) in the interannual comparison, and in the industry the reduction was more intense (-6.1%). 

The aggregate regular real income had the fifth consecutive quarter of growth for the private sector as a whole and in the case of industry it was the second consecutive quarter of increase. We can see, therefore, that the positive performance of aggregate labor income has been determined by the level of occupation, since average income has been falling.

The full text is available in Portuguese.