Structural Unemployment in Brazil in the Neoliberal Era
The Brazilian economy is historically characterized by an unequal economic and social structure. Over the years, given this economic and social structure, the Brazilian economy developed without solving its main problems. This has created barriers to both stable economic growth and improvements in t...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Pluto Journals
2013-06-01
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| Series: | World Review of Political Economy |
| Online Access: | https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.4.2.0192 |
| Summary: | The Brazilian economy is historically characterized by an unequal economic and social structure. Over the years, given this economic and social structure, the Brazilian economy developed without solving its main problems. This has created barriers to both stable economic growth and improvements in the living conditions of the population. Even though the industrial sector between 1930 and 1970 increased its investment, growth and output rates, reinforcing its structure and proportion in the gross domestic product, unemployment and income inequality have remained as structural characteristics of the Brazilian economy. The crisis in the 1980s and the neoliberal policies in the 1990s strengthened these problems, especially through the increase in the unemployment rate and in the informal sector, and with the deregulation of the labor laws. The Brazilian government only started to pay attention to those problems from the Lula government onwards, implementing public policies to promote improvements in the labor market. However, high unemployment rates, low wages and income inequality still remain as structural problems in the Brazilian economy. Based on these aspects, the article will analyze structural unemployment in Brazil over the last ten years, pointing out and trying to understand the problems and trends. The discussion developed by Karl Marx in Capital concerning the relative surplus population and the reserve army will be the theoretical approach on which that analysis will be based. |
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| ISSN: | 2042-891X 2042-8928 |