O mercado de trabalho brasileiro na pandemia da COVID-19: impactos e políticas públicas de proteção e fomento ao emprego e à renda

Abstract

In 2019, the coronavirus proved to be lethal and a public health issue around the world. Until then harmless to the human species, the coronavirus underwent mutations which developed into a serious respiratory disease that was first found in China and quickly spread around the world. In 2020, WHO declared Covid-2019 as a pandemic. At this time, the impacts on the economy caused by the disease were devastating. Brazil was already facing a rather worrying scenario with regard to the labor market, with problems that go far beyond unemployment. For this reason, the government developed public policies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on the economy, ensuring the minimum preservation of job vacancies and income. The objective of this work, therefore, is to understand the effects of the pandemic on the labor market and to what extent the public policies adopted by the government were able to mitigate them, from a Keynesian perspective. For this purpose, data from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (PNAD) and Relação Anual de Informações Sociais (RAIS) were used in order to observe the trajectory of variables related to the labor market. It is concluded that, despite the importance of these policies to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on the economy, the Brazilian labor market is permeated by deep problems aggravated by Covid-19, which demand a State that plays a leading role in promoting economic growth, as it was conceived by Keynes.