The percentage of people looking for work for two years or more, in the second quarter of this year, fell 17.3% compared to the same period last year.
According to data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad-C), released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), there were 1.7 million people in this situation in the country in the second quarter of this year.
This is the lowest number for a second quarter since 2015, when there were 1.4 million people looking for work for more than two years. Despite the decline, the group still represents 22.4% of the total number of people looking for work.
“A large part of employment in Brazil is generated through services. And those services of lesser complexity, which require a lower level of education, end up enabling a greater absorption of diverse profiles of workers. This can contribute to a reduction in the number of people who have been looking for work for a longer time,” says IBGE researcher Adriana Beringuy.
There were also declines in the number of people seeking employment for more than one year and less than two years (-15.2%), between one month and one year (-11%) and for less than one month (-10.2%). The largest proportion of unemployed people is among those seeking employment for more than one month and less than one year (47.8% of the total).
Sex
In the second quarter of this year, the unemployment rate for women reached 8.6%, the lowest rate since the fourth quarter of 2014 (7.9%). Meanwhile, the employment rate for women, that is, the percentage of people working in relation to the total of those of working age, reached a record level (48.1%) in the historical series, which began in 2012.
Despite this, there is still a large disparity in relation to men, who had an unemployment rate of 5.6% in the second quarter of this year, that is, 3 percentage points less than women. The employment rate for men is 68.3%, that is, 20 percentage points more than women.
The average real usual income of women was R$2,696 in the second quarter of this year, R$728 less than men (R$3,424).
