|
The level of employment in the Brazilian industry in 2004 presented the best result since 1990. The rate of growth was 1.9%. In comparison to the month of December 2003, the increase was 4.4%. With regard to the fourth quarter of 2004, when compared to the same period in the previous year, the increase in the number of people employed was 4.3%.
These figures are included in the Monthly Industrial Employment and Income Research, published yesterday by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
The food and drink sectors (6.6%), machinery and equipment (16.0%) and means of transport (16.5%) were those that employed most in December last year.
The 4.4% growth in the monthly level was the result of the increase in the level of employment in 13 of the 14 areas and in 13 of the 18 sectors investigated.
In the Northern and Midwestern regions, the number of people hired grew 8%. São Paulo, in southeastern Brazil, was the state that contributed most to this growth, registering an increase of 4.6% in the level of employment.
The state is responsible for around 38% of industrial employment in the country, and 12 sectors hired more than they fired, with special attention to the machinery and equipment sectors (26.1%) and means of transport (16.6%).
According to the study, Rio de Janeiro, also in the Southeast, had the lowest rate of growth (1.4%).
When comparing December 2004 to December 2003, the level of industrial employment only dropped in Rio Grande do Sul (-0.9%), due to reductions of the number of employees in eight industrial sectors, especially leather shoes (-12.4%).
In the global total for the country, the number of employees dismissed was greater than the number of employees hired in five areas, being the main negative impacts those of the metal products (-4.1%) and leather shoe (-3.7%) sectors.
Translated by Mark Ament
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.