Brazil is once again facing a recurring historical dilemma: how to grow, include, and protect workers in a rapidly transforming world. Recent formal employment statistics indicate recovery, but they mask a more complex reality—that of a country that is growing but does not fully ensure dignified working conditions. Job creation, concentrated in the service sector and in low-productivity activities, coexists with a falling participation rate¹ and the persistence of informality, which affects almost four out of ten employed individuals.
Precarious employment, which previously implied exclusion from the formal market, now also manifests itself as a characteristic of the formal employment itself. Many of those who are not unemployed frequently live without stable employment, without social security, without union representation, and with volatile incomes. The sociological and psychological consequences, the subject of films by director Ken Loach², reveal aspects of this degradation of labor relations and the persistent uncertainty stemming from it. Guy Standing³, a British economist at the ILO, called this new character the precariat: the worker who has lost the seven basic forms of security that structured labor citizenship—job security, income security, employment contract security, representation security, working conditions security, qualification security, and market insertion security.
In Brazil, the erosion of these securities is not a recent phenomenon. The 1988 Federal Constitution attempted to consolidate a social citizenship founded on work, but the liberalizing agenda of the 1990s weakened the industrial base and fragmented the productive fabric. From 2004 onwards, with the increase in the minimum wage and the advancement of formalization, the country attempted a partial reconstruction of these guarantees. But the cycle was interrupted. The 2017 reforms and subsequent decisions of the Supreme Federal Court, coupled with the recession and restrictive monetary policy, reinforced the axis of finance to the detriment of the labor economy. Legal uncertainty has been established regarding workers’ rights, which are frequently modified.
Today, the result is an economy that, despite growing, is unable to offer adequate job security. Monetary policy with high interest rates and narrow inflation targets suppresses demand and inhibits investment, which is restricted to 17% of GDP, compromising the State’s ability to coordinate a strategy for sustained growth and full employment in a quality labor market. Fiscal policy, subordinated to the logic of austerity, limits public investment and the expansion of social policies that could support a dynamic labor market.
The so-called “uberization” of work is the most visible face of this insecurity. The discourse of flexibility masks the transfer of production risks to the individual worker, transformed into a micro-entrepreneur without protection. Millions of Brazilians live from their work, but without the minimum guarantees of citizenship—what Standing would call the absence of income security and job security. Uber, iFood, 99, and other digital platforms have created workers orphaned of rights, without access to social security, vacations, sick leave, or union protection. The need to regulate and provide benefits to these professionals is urgent to prevent digital modernization from deepening inequality and precarious employment. Contemporary digital informality is disruptive and reproduces the same logic of backwardness.
Rebuilding job security is, therefore, a central challenge of the development strategy. Work must once again become the axis of a national project. This means rearticulating macroeconomic policy with social and industrial policy: growing sustainably and distributing productivity gains. It also means strengthening professional and technological education as a state policy, articulated with a new productive structure capable of offering quality jobs and with a modern and inclusive educational system.
Another relevant challenge is the end of the 6×1 schedule, traditional in commerce and services, which imposes six consecutive days of work for only one day of rest. Overcoming this model requires solutions that bring more benefits to workers, such as flexible working hours, greater predictability of schedules, extended weekly rest, and compensation mechanisms that respect the physical and mental health of professionals. Regulation should seek a balance between productivity and quality of life, promoting collective bargaining and guaranteeing basic rights for all.
The increase in the minimum wage, income transfers such as Bolsa Família, collective bargaining, social security protection, and the strengthening of unions are not remnants of a regulated past, but foundations of a civilized future. They are instruments to rebuild the security of representation, income security, and skills security that la Standing.
Criticisms of the minimum wage increase policy deserve closer analysis. Even with the recent recovery of real gains after the interruption in 2019, the current value, around $285, is still 12.3% below the historical peak of 2011, when it reached $325. Evidently, budgetary responsibility is essential to sustain the recovery of the minimum wage’s purchasing power; this is not about advocating fiscal recklessness. However, under this same logic, the idea that Brazil’s long-term economic growth depends on restricting the improvement of the living conditions of the poorest is unsustainable.
Ultimately, the approximately $100 that workers received shortly after the Real Plan barely guaranteed subsistence; and one only needs to observe the difficulties faced today by those who still live on the minimum wage to understand how relevant this challenge remains. The 2017 reforms and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, coupled with low growth and restrictive monetary policy, reinforced the focus on finance at the expense of the labor economy. But this cannot be the norm if the goal is a more just country.
Celso Furtado argued that development is, above all, a process of liberating human potential—not the abstract freedom of the isolated individual, but the capacity of each person to participate in collective creation and their destiny. This liberation requires job security, real income that grows with productivity, access to education, and social recognition: conditions without which talent and effort remain prisoners of necessity. The Brazilian challenge, therefore, is to rebuild the link between economic growth and human emancipation—making work not only a factor of production, but the moral, social, and civilizational center of the national project.
Footnote
1 The participation rate is the ratio of the economically active population (EAP) to the working-age population (WAP). The EAP is composed of employed and unemployed individuals. When unemployed individuals give up looking for work, due to discouragement or an increase in household income, the unemployed leave the EAP. This is reflected in a reduction in the unemployment rate, which is not necessarily a positive indicator, as it may indicate discouragement. When this occurs due to an increase in household income, it is a positive indicator.
2. I, Daniel Blake. Directed by Ken Loach. Produced by Rebecca O’Brien. Written by Paul Laverty. United Kingdom: Sixteen Films, 2016. 1 film (100 min), sound, color; and WHY You Weren’t There. Directed by Ken Loach. Produced by Rebecca O’Brien. Written by Paul Laverty. United Kingdom: Sixteen Films, 2019. 1 film (101 min), sound, color.
3. GUY STANDING. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
4. The dollar is a volatile benchmark because it is associated with floating exchange rate policy, which is affected by currency flows, international instability, and the country’s monetary policy. The real minimum wage has been rising since 1995, but this has not affected the country’s competitiveness, as in dollar terms it is below the 2010 levels.
5 The dollar reached R$ 6.73 on December 25, 2024, and closed at R$ 5.33 on November 17, 2025.