Brazil
The worst impact of the global financial crisis on Brazil's labour market occurred in December 2008, with the net loss of 655,000 formal sector jobs, the Brazil’s Labour minister Carlos Lupi said.
Effects had been felt since October, putting an end to a period of strong growth in formal employment that began in 2004. During the first nine months of 2008, jobs grew by 2.09 million, a monthly average of 231,888.
An upsurge in lay-offs, mainly due to the fall in industrial production and exports, began in October. In November, the Labour Ministry's General Registry of Employed and Unemployed (CAGED) recorded the first negative result of the year, with a net loss of 41,000 jobs.
There was still a net employment loss in January, but it was much smaller at 102,000 jobs, and in February there were 9,000 more jobs created than lost, a small net gain indicating a turning point in the trend, which was accentuated in March.
As well as the figures showing the trend, the fall in applications for unemployment insurance and the hiring of workers in sectors like construction, education, health and other services demonstrate that "the crisis is over" in the labour market, the minister said.
The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 and 8.5 percent in January and February, respectively, after holding steady for several months at an average of around 7.5 percent in this country of 190 million people, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Brazil is reacting differently to the global recession because of its internal demand and its relatively low dependence on international trade. Increasing the minimum wage in real terms, a policy adopted by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since it took office in 2002, means that the food is relatively unaffected.
At the present moment, the employment situation in Brazil is overcoming the brief interruption in the strong growth it has shown over recent years, but the minister acknowledged there is a serious structural problem in the national labour market: the enormous job instability.
Page updated 2010-02-08 by
