Brazil faces lost generation of young workers after recession

SAO PAULO: When Ana Carolina Gomes da Silva became the first in her family to earn a college diploma and followed up with a master’s degree in paediatric medicine, finding a good job seemed like just a matter of time.

After three years, the 26-year-old Brazilian is still looking.

“I graduated in June 2014 and thought I’d have a job by December,” she lamented. “The most I’ve gotten was one group job interview.”

Brazil’s worst recession on record – a two-year-long slump that probably ended in the first quarter – has left 14 million people unemployed, the bulk of them young workers like Silva.

Recent graduates are struggling to pay student loans and gain work experience, turning a demographic boom once considered an engine of future growth into a drag on the Brazilian economy, which may be saddled with a lost generation of young workers.

“If the youth give up investing in education and the economy starts to grow again, there may be a scarcity of teachers, physicians, lawyers and so on,” said Renato Meirelles, head of Sao Paulobased research firm Instituto Locomotiva.

About 4.5 million workers aged 18 to 24, most of them with more formal education than their parents, were unemployed in the first quarter.

That amounts to more than a quarter of all young Brazilian workers, government data shows.

The jobless rate among teenagers between 14 and 17 years old already in the labour force, who are often a crucial source of income for poor families, has soared to 45 per cent, contributing to an overall unemployment rate of nearly 14 per cent. — Reuters