A Good Start To The Year

Brazil's economic calendar kicked 2010 off to a good start, with signs of a robust recovery now appearing across the majority of sectors in the economy. This has been reflected in the Brazilian labour market, with formal job creation reaching a record January high of 181,419, with strong gains in manufacturing (68,920), the service sector (57,889) and civil construction (54,330). This is in stark contrast to the 55,130 net job losses in manufacturing in January 2009. The official unemployment rate, too, is now one percentage point lower than 12 months earlier, coming in at 7.2% in January. However, we note that an increase in domestic demand and industrial capacity utilisation still failed to create enough new jobs to counteract the record job losses registered during the three-month period of November 2008 to January 2009, when a net total of 797,515 jobs were lost. Though this figure was offset by September 2009, new jobs in manufacturing so far make up less than half the jobs lost during the recession.

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