Source: Cruzeiro Net - SP - 20/08/2009

For every ten contracts made in commerce from 1998 to 2008, six had a formal contract, according to the Labor in Commerce Bulletin, from the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese). In total, 14,9 million formal jobs were generated in the period, which confirms the increasing formalization of occupational ties, in the midst of the process of recovery of urban employment.

Virtually all regions analyzed by Dieese showed a reduction in the percentage of informality. In the metropolitan region of São Paulo, where the largest proportion of workers without a formal contract is, the informality rate dropped from 24% in 1998 to 21,5% in 2008. In Salvador, there was a 25,3% drop in 1998 to 19,4% in 2008; in Recife, from 23,8% to 18,1%; in the Federal District, from 23% to 16,1%; and in Belo Horizonte, from 19,8% to 13,4%. The only exception was Porto Alegre where there was a slight increase in informality, from 13,2% in 1998 to 14% last year. Even so, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul has the second lowest rate among the regions studied.

The advance in formal contracting is a reflection of the economic growth seen in the decade in the labor market - even though the period of 2001 and 2003 had a degradation in employment, due to external and internal crises. But, despite the improvement in the period, Dieese considers that the number of workers hired without legal registration in the trade is significant, which, in 2008, totaled 220 thousand.

Pay

The Dieese study noted that the pay gap between formal jobs and those without a formal contract has narrowed. But this effect is mainly due to the reduction in the hourly wage of registered workers, which has largely overcome the decline observed in the income of informally hired merchants. In São Paulo, the real hourly earnings of formal workers fell 31,1% in 2008 compared to 1998, while the informal income decreased 1,8%. In Belo Horizonte, where salaried workers without a formal contract had their income increased by 36,6% in the period, there was a decrease of 5,5% in the salaries of contracted workers. (AE)