4.8 Million Brazilians Became Discouraged Workers in Q2

08/17/2018 - 11h51

The number of Brazilians who are no longer seeking employment shot to an all-time high in the second quarter of the year. Between April and June, there were 4.83 million discouraged workers in the country.

The hidden unemployment rate reached 4.4% and it is the highest in the current survey historical data series, which started in 2012.

The discouraged group has 838,000 more individuals than the same period in 2017. "The probability of someone becoming discouraged from looking for work is connected to the amount of time they are unemployed," said Cimar Azeredo, coordinator in the Work and Output department at IBGE, Brazil's equivalent to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau. "People look for work and give up, given the bleak economy".

The increase in this group of unemployed people who would like to work, but are not currently looking for jobs, is one of the reasons why the unemployment rate decreased from 13.1% in the first quarter to 12.4% in the second quarter.

The age group above 40 years old is gaining ground among the active seekers. The range between 40 and 59 years old represented in this period 22.7% of unemployed people. This amounts to 2.95 million individuals, a 131% increase from the second quarter of 2014, before the recession that deeply impacted the labor market.

In this period, 1.67 million workers in this age bracket were laid off. "This is concerning, because it shows that unemployment affected a portion of the public that cannot by any means be without work," said Azeredo.

Translated by NATASHA MADOV

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