Of every four self-employed workers in the country, only one was registered with the National Register of Legal Entities (CNPJ) in 2024, that is, formalization of the activity. There were 6.6 million people in a universe of 25.5 million self-employed workers.
Despite the low coverage, the data shows progress in 12 years. In 2012, self-accounts with CNPJ accounted for 15% of the total. In 2019, a fifth (20.2%) and in the latest survey, released this Wednesday (19), a quarter (25.7%).
The finding is in a special edition of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
The research contains annual data since 2012, except for 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which made data collection unfeasible.
The 25.5 million self-employed people in the country in 2024 represented 25.2% of the 101.3 million workers in Brazil in 2024. In 2012 they were 22.4%.
>> Read the other reports from Brazil Agency about this edition of Pnad Contínua
Registering with the CNPJ can represent advantages for workers, such as issuing invoices, accessing credit and business banking services, hiring formal employees, in addition to social security benefits.
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Business lines
The IBGE classifies self-employed workers into five activity groups. Between the segments, it is possible to notice inequalities. Commerce is the group with the largest share of registered people.
Proportion of own account registered with the CNPJ by field of activity:
- Commerce, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles: 33.2%
- Services: 31.5%
- General industry: 23.4%
- Construction: 15.2%
- Agriculture, livestock, forestry production, fishing and aquaculture: 7.2%
Research analyst William Kratochwill believes that the low percentage of own accounts with CNPJ has to do with the size of the business.
“As the business they have is still small, they do not see this need, they have not yet been asked to formalize their activity”, he assesses.
In some cases, he adds, the person considers it not worth it: “Formalization may end up incurring taxes and things that they are not prepared for.”
Education
The data shows that the higher the level of education, the greater the self-employed people’s adherence to registration with the CNPJ:
- No education and incomplete elementary school: 11.2%
- Complete elementary and incomplete secondary education: 17.6%
- Complete high school and incomplete higher education: 27.9%
- Completed higher education: 48.4%
“Low education sometimes limits a person in terms of knowledge of how to do [para se formalizar]”, says the IBGE researcher.
The research also shows that, while in the employed population as a whole the level of union membership is 8.9%, among self-employed workers it is 5.1%.
