The employment level of the Brazilian population reached 53.3% in 2022, according to Census data. This means that just over half of people aged 14 and over were working when the survey was carried out. The proportion is slightly lower than that seen in the previous Census, carried out in 2010, when 55.5% of people over this age were employed.
“In 2010, the economy was more heated. In 2022, we were coming out of the pandemic. There is a recovery movement in 2022, but the economy has not yet fully recovered”, explains IBGE analyst João Hallack Neto.
Census data relating to work and income were released this Thursday (09) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and refer to answers given by around 10% of the population, selected at random to compose a sample, who answered a more complete questionnaire than the basic questions applied to all people.
They also show that 11.1% of adolescents between 14 and 17 years old were already doing some type of work at the time of the survey. At the other end, 14.9% of people aged 65 or over also worked.
Income
In contrast, Brazilian workers received, in 2022, R$2,851 per month, on average, but 35.3% of people had remuneration of, at most, 1 minimum wage, which at the time was equivalent to R$1,212. In this regard, there was a slight improvement between the years, as the proportion in the 2010 Census was 36.4%.
In both editions of the survey, the majority of workers received between 1 and 5 minimum wages, a proportion that rose from 54% to 57% between 2010 and 2022. On the other hand, the share of people with income from work exceeding 5 minimum wages fell, from 9.6% to 7.6%.
Still according to the Census, income from work was responsible for 75.5% of monthly household income, while sources such as retirement, pension, benefits from government social programs and rent accounted for the other 24.5%.
The relationship between educational level and remuneration was also proven: workers with completed higher education received, on average, R$5,796, around R$3,500 more than those who had only completed secondary education, a population with an average income of R$2,291 per month.
Work
Some changes in the job market also appeared in the survey. In 2022, the population employed as employees totaled 69.2%, almost 5 percentage points less than in 2010. Self-employed workers totaled 26.7%, an increase of more than 4 points compared to 2010, when they made up 22.4%. Despite the proportion of employers being much smaller, there was also an increase between the years, from 2.1% to 3.3%
Among employees, the majority worked in the private sector with a formal contract, in 2022: 56.3%. Next come unregistered workers in the private sector, who totaled 18.5% and military and statutory workers, 13.7%.
Regions
The research also identified some regional differences. Regarding the level of occupancy, for example, the Brazilian average of 53.3% was surpassed in the Southeast and Central-West regions and in the South, where the highest proportion was recorded: 60.3%. In the North and Northeast, less than half of the population over 14 years old was employed at the time of the survey: 48.4% and 45.6%, respectively.
This inequality also appeared in the income obtained from work. In the Central-West, this income represented 80.6% of the total income declared by households, 12.8 percentage points more than the proportion of 67.9% found in the Northeast. In the other three regions, the ratio was around 76%. The average monthly income from all jobs ranged from R$2,015 in the Northeast, to R$3,292 in the Central-West, reaching R$2,238 in the North Region, R$3,154 in the Southeast Region and R$3,190 in the South.
“Of the total number of municipalities, 520 of them had a nominal income below one minimum wage, while 19 of them have an indicator above four minimum wages. Illustrating the huge inequality that we have spread throughout history, the 10 municipalities with the lowest incomes were located in the Northeast Region. On the other hand, 10 municipalities with the highest average incomes were in the South and Southeast regions”, adds IBGE analyst João Hallack Neto.
