Formal job creation falls 43% in September, the weakest result for the month in the series begun in 2020
Brazil added 121,300 jobs with signed work cards, according to Caged; the year-to-date total of 1.25 million is the lowest for the period since the pandemic.
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
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Brazil created 121,300 jobs with a signed work card in September, according to data from the General Register of Employed and Unemployed Persons (Caged) released on Wednesday (4) by the Ministry of Labor and Employment, g1 reported. The net figure results from 2.21 million hirings and 2.09 million layoffs.
The number represents a 43.5% drop from September 2025, when about 214,600 jobs were created, and is the worst performance for the month since the current series began in 2020. Analysts do not consider comparisons with earlier years appropriate because the methodology changed.
From January to September, the country created 1.25 million formal jobs, down 27.9% from 1.73 million in the same period last year. It is also the smallest net gain for those nine months since 2020, when the pandemic led to the loss of 775,000 jobs.
Despite the slowdown, the stock of formal jobs rose to 48.36 million at the end of September, up from 48.24 million in August and 47.57 million a year earlier. Jobs were added in four of the five major sectors of the economy and in all five regions of the country.
The average real starting wage was R$ 2,429.41, slightly down from August (R$ 2,430.51) and above the R$ 2,384.50 of September 2025. Caged covers only formal workers and is therefore not directly comparable with the unemployment rate from IBGE, the national statistics agency, which stood at 5.2% in the quarter ended in September, the lowest level for the period since 2012.