Economic recovery and formal employment: Evaluation for Brazilian Northeast between 2000 and 2008

Abstract

Since the last two decades of the twentieth century, Brazilian economy undergoes profound structural and juncture changes which compromised its capacity for generating formal job posts. With the resumption of the economic growth since 2003, Brazilian job market has shown signs of recovery. This paper investigates how the Northeast Region was benefited with the recent generation of formal  job posts, and determines the profi le of such posts. Data from the General Registration of Employees and Unemployed (CAGED) from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) show significant increase in the number of formal occupations in the country (9,732,062) between 2000 and 2008, with 13.20% of these new posts located in the Northeast (1,842,162). This region, in 2008, concentrated 40.33% of its posts in the service sector, in microsized companies (87.51%) composed mainly of male workforce (66.78%), aged between 18 and 24 years old (81.31%), with completed high school (71.03%), earning in its majority (70.91%) at most up to 1 minimum wage. It is shown that the Northeast region increased the job posts stock throughout the 2000s, however this occupation was selective by sex, age and schooling level, in addition to precarious, since it is observed high turnover rate and low salaries, despite improvements in the educational level of its workforce.
Key words: formal employment, job posts number, Northeast.