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Non-Tech : The Brazil Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (1078)	8/5/2012 8:54:30 AM
From: THE ANT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2508

Chinese consumption will some day lead the world out of recession

To: elmatador who wrote (1078)	8/16/2012 7:52:40 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 2508

Brazil’s labour market defies slowdown By Joe Leahy in São Paulo When Tiago Rocha was laid off last week from a São Paulo architects’ office, he did not follow counterparts in Spain or Greece and take to the streets in anger. He did not need to. Brazil’s strong jobs market, with unemployment still close to record lows in spite of a protracted slowdown in the economy, meant he waltzed straight into another job with a little help from his contacts and his former boss. “The labour market isn’t bad,” says Mr Rocha, who is working virtually full-time while he finishes the final year of his architecture degree. “Everyone from my faculty is working.” One of the forces driving the so-called “new Brazil” of the past decade has been its buoyant labour market, which has continued to defy gravity even as the economy has slowed to a crawl – from 7.5 per cent in 2010 to a projected 2 per cent this year. A mixture of favourable demographics and a resilient services sector, with Brazilians continuing to consume, has kept the country’s workers in jobs even as their peers in Europe and the US have struggled to find employment. “There is a lag between activity and employment, and probably the employment numbers will be the last to be hit by this slowdown,” says Guilherme Loureiro, economist at Barclays in São Paulo. “But I don’t see a huge increase in unemployment.” The jobless figure is hovering near record lows at 5.8 per cent, down from 11.5 per cent in 2004. Employment grew 2.5 per cent a year on average from 2004-10, even as Brazil’s working age population expanded at 1.5 per cent a year. This simultaneous increase in work and workers coincided with a period of strong economic growth fuelled by the commodity trade with China, as well as reforms within Brazil that stimulated the development of a credit market. The emergence of millions of new middle-class consumers in turn created more jobs by fuelling demand for homes, cars, retail goods and services. Alongside this, new industries in Brazil, such as the discovery of offshore oil reserves, have led to a shortage of all kinds of workers – from those on the shop floor to engineers, middle managers and chief executives. What began with a glut of labour has turned to paucity, with companies increasingly struggling to find the right skills for the right job. “We see demand in every segment,” says Renata Fabrini, a managing partner at Fesa, a Brazilian recruitment agency. Riccardo Barberis, country manager of recruiter ManpowerGroup Brazil in São Paulo, says there is a skills mismatch in which universities and employers are not seeing eye-to-eye on education curricula. This needs to be addressed quickly, he says, if Brazil, which together with Mexico and India is one of the few countries with an expanding working age population, is to reap all of the benefits. Mr Loureiro says: “The contribution from labour to growth is going to be smaller, so in order to grow at the same pace you have to compensate either by pushing productivity or increasing investment.” Partly because of this skills shortage in Brazil, wages have continued to rise – by between 40 and 50 per cent since 2003. Even so, employer surveys indicate that the majority are planning to hire in the third quarter, even if economic growth slows. “We still feel there are segments that are progressing very well, for instance civil construction is one that is still supporting labour market growth very significantly, or the consumer market,” says Manpower’s Mr Barberis. According to Barclays’ figures, Brazil’s working age population will continue to grow at roughly the same rate until 2015, after which the growth will taper off and then reverse after 2030. “We have here in Brazil a very strong asset – young people,” says Ms Fabrini. “This is the positive part because you can offer them opportunities. On the other hand if you don’t, because you don’t align the labour market to the candidates available, this will be potentially a risk.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.