With the arrival of full employment in the country, see the stories of those who have managed to position themselves on the market

Job creation lost momentum because the total number of people employed remained stable at 102.5 million from one quarter to the next, although a slight increase brought that number to a new record high. Compared to last year, 926,000 people got a job, taking into account formal and informal jobs. It’s easier to get a place.

Jamil Vitoria, 23, got a job as a clerk at a snack bar in central Rio. She had been unemployed since April, looking for opportunities until last month she went with her mother to look for work. After handing in some resumes, the two returned home. A few days later, Jamil received a call from the cafeteria.

– I like working here because it represents steady money – she said while serving customers yesterday. -I came to hand in the resume on Wednesday, and the good news came on Friday. On Monday I started working.

Three months ago, it was 18-year-old Kawa Gomez’s turn. He got his first official job, as a stock boy in a recently opened store in Sara, a popular mall in Rio. Previously, the young man worked as an app delivery employee and faced grueling working hours.

– I have a connection with the audience and the pace is much lighter. “I was already riding my bike more than ten hours a day to deliver orders,” Gomez said.

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Nene Almeida, 21, also got a job a month ago. She was unemployed for a year and a half after being fired from a restaurant. She got the new job, as a saleswoman in a clothing store in the desert, after a friend recommended it.

– Before the nomination, I was unemployed and could not find work, but fortunately, I am now working. “I think I have a good relationship with the audience, so I ended up doing well here,” Naini said.

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Fernanda Carla, 42, used the opportunity presented by her husband’s new job to start selling lunch boxes. He found a spot at a restaurant in October, and the next month, he signed a partnership to sell the restaurant’s lunch boxes.

His routine begins at 8:30 a.m., when he goes to the kitchen to get lunch boxes that start selling from 10:30 a.m. However, the daily rate of R$60 is still underwhelming. For her, it is not easy to get a place in the formal market.

-I got a job only because of my husband. People say it’s easy to find a job, but it depends on the job. I earn only 60 R$. I was out of work because I was cleaning and lost them all during the pandemic. Entering the formal market has never been easy, and it is not so now – highlights Fernanda.

According to Rafael Pérez, an economist at analytical consulting firm Suno Research, one of the reasons for the continued strength of the labor market is the good performance of the service sector:

We did not expect it to reach this level of 5.4%, especially since the economy is still slowing. But the service sector has performed very well, and it is a sector that employs a lot of employees, which is encouraging this decline in unemployment. This situation is closely linked to increasing income and greater household consumption of services. Retail trade, although slow, has a certain resilience.

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Despite the slowdown in job creation, there was no shortage of positive points in the IBGE data. The number of unemployed also fell to the lowest number since the beginning of the IBGE historical series, in 2012. There are 5.910 million workers in this situation. In one year, 788,000 people came off the unemployment line, a decrease of 11.8%.

Compared to the immediately previous quarter, the decrease was 3.4% – the number of unemployed decreased without an increase in the number of employed people because there was an increase in the total number of people outside the labor market, who are neither working nor looking for work.

Average income from work also broke a record, reaching R$3,528 compared to R$3,507 recorded in the quarter ending in September. Compared to the previous year, the increase was 3.9%, which is already discounted for inflation. The number of workers under official contracts also reached a record high of 39.182 million.

According to experts, the job market remains hot due to a combination of factors. Economists cite an aging population, rising levels of education, “platforming” (i.e. freelancing via apps, without an employment relationship), the digitalization of the economy (which promotes different types of services), and labor reform, which has favored some types of employment, such as temporary contracts, among other factors.

This helps explain why such a low unemployment rate does not cause rampant inflation. Low unemployment is putting pressure on inflation, but it is not, for example, as was the case in 2013 or 2014, said Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho, a researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Economics at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV Ibre). It will be very difficult for us to return to a double-digit unemployment rate level.

The relationship between low unemployment and inflation is through demand. When the labor market is strong, with a large number of people working, wages rise and workers have more money to spend. If supply in the economy does not keep up with demand, inflation tends to rise.

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To control prices, the central bank raises interest rates, cooling demand – in a sequential process that begins with increasing the cost of installment purchases and investments financed by companies. Therefore, a hot labor market is a sign of inflation and, in response, an increase in interest rates.

Even after the October data from IBGE, economists did not see much impact on the Bank of Colombia’s upcoming interest rate decisions. Luis Otavio Leal, chief economist at financial management and consulting firm G5 Partners, continued his bet that the Bank of Colombia will start lowering the Selec rate (the base interest rate, currently at 15% annually) in January. Perez, of Suno Research, expects the cuts to begin only in March.

Even so, the unemployment rate is expected to remain at lower levels than previously expected. It is possible to consider the country to be below full employment – ​​a situation where the supply of job vacancies is less than the number of people wanting to work – although economists believe this equilibrium point is shifting.

— Nowadays, no one can truly say for sure what the natural rate of unemployment is. In the past, people talked about rates between 7% and 8%. “I think it’s closer to 7% now,” Leal said.

Manuel Melo, 40, is experiencing this new reality in action. The worker remained unemployed for three months, until he got a job as a janitor in a building in Limi in the southern region of the capital.

He admits that he had difficulty finding a vacancy, but, unlike Fernanda Carla, he sees a more positive scenario in the job search.

-I used to do odd jobs as a construction worker when the opportunity arose here, but I think people now have an easier time finding their way back. In 2020, I haven’t worked for four years, and I’m always searching. This time, it was only three months, the doorman said.

For Fernanda Cristian Galvão, 28, the solution was to turn to the informal market. Unemployed since October, she began preparing snacks and artisanal sweets to sell on the beach, but she soon realized that a better alternative was to work at the center, in the morning and at lunchtime, when there was a large influx of workers.

— I even tried to sell on the beach, but the idea of ​​coming to the center crossed my mind. In addition to being less tiring, my father and stepmother have stores here and came up with the idea. In the morning, I sell delicious snacks and coffee with milk, and at lunchtime I sell sweets. It has not been enough so far because the profit is small, but as time goes by, people recognize them and have to buy more – Fernanda predicts.