In February, 148,019 formal jobs were created in Brazil, according to a report published this Tuesday, March 25, by the General Records Office for Employment and Unemployment (Caged) of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor. Compared with January, the figure represents a 0.53% increase.
This is the second best result for February since surveys started being conducted, in 1992. The best result ever was achieved last year, when 176,632 formal job positions were created.
In the accumulated result for the first two months of the year, a total of 253,487 jobs were created, i.e., 0.92% more than in the first two months of 2006.
The Brazilian Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho, called attention to evolution in the transformation industry, which created 30,792 jobs in February, a figure that is second only to the result recorded in February 2004 (38,086 new jobs).
"We will work and hope for this to become a trend, because 2004 was the year with the best growth rate. And the transformation industry was precisely the motor of growth in 2004. With investments from the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), the civil construction sector will surely help a lot.
"If the forecasted trend for the agricultural sector to come out of its crisis proves true, and should the transformation industry fair well, we can say that we will have a quite reasonable year, compared with 2005 and 2006," Marinho explained.
Marinho, who was the president of Brazil's biggest labor union, the CUT, said on July 2005 that his goal in his post was to create an average of 100,000 new jobs per month.
"This is the challenge we have accepted," he said then. "Create 100,000 new on-the-books jobs per month. The message we are sending is that the economy will continue growing, creating jobs and providing work for men and women who are unemployed."
