Fluxo e estoque no desemprego da Região Metropolitana de Salvador

Abstract

Throughout the 1990s, several changes in the Brazilian economy, resulting from processes of productive restructuring, economic opening, and macroeconomic adjustments, led to significant structural changes in the Brazilian economic organization. As a consequence of this process, a new configuration of unemployment can be observed, characterized mainly by a sharp increase in the number of unemployed associated with an increase in the proportion of unemployed with unemployment lasting more than 12 months, the diversification of forms of unemployment, and an unequal pattern of unemployment distribution, in extent and intensity, among individuals according to their personal and economic attributes. Within this context, this work analyzes the relationship between the average duration of unemployment, the flow, and the stock of unemployed in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (RMS). To this end, the database of the Employment and Unemployment Survey between 1997 and 2003 is used in cross-section. The measurement of unemployment duration is done using a new methodology, based on synthetic groups, and on calculating the probability of continued unemployment. The main focus of the work is to show that the duration of unemployment in the RMS and the stock of unemployed maintain a positive and direct relationship, such that an increase in the stock of unemployed causes an increase in the duration of unemployment. The existence of heterogeneity in durations among the different categories of unemployed is also discussed, and the groups with the greatest propensity for long-term unemployment are identified.