In reality, the increase in unemployment, at this moment, not only reflects a typical situation at the beginning of the year, but also indicates, contradictory as it may seem, a greater movement in economic activity. Firstly, it is at this time of year that those hired as temporary workers are laid off to reinforce the activity with a view to meeting the increase in demand at the end of the year.
Furthermore, and more importantly, with better job prospects, a number of discouraged workers, who had previously given up looking for a job, return to the market in search of employment. Workers who are not looking for a job are obviously not counted as unemployed, but they will be included in the statistics as such if they are looking for a job and still cannot find employment. The phenomenon was observed in this most recent PNAD investigation.
The fact is that the number of workers in the employed population remained stable in February, and the usual real income continued to rise, at R$3,110m, remaining 1.1% above the value of November 2023 and almost 4.5% more than February 2023.
It is these favorable employment and income indicators that lead analysts to project an increase in family consumption in 2024, with positive and more direct effects on services and retail trade. Forecasts, including those from the Central Bank, registered in the March RTI, are that family consumption will grow by around 2.5% in the year.
Social programs boost GDP
At the origin of this advance, it is possible to locate the social programs and the policy of real increases in the minimum wage, undertaken by the Lula government. According to calculations by economists at Ibre-FGV (Brazilian Institute of Economics, of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation), public spending registered a real increase of 12.5% in the 12 months up to January.
