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The Brazilians Have Never Earned So Much! The Average Income Hit A Historic Record, Surpassing R$ 3,378. With Less Informality And More Formal Jobs, The Economy Advances! But Does This Increase Mean More Purchasing Power? Discover What Is Behind This Growth And How It Impacts Your Pocket!
The average income of Brazilian workers reached R$ 3,378, the highest value recorded since 2012, when the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad Contínua), conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), started.
The data was released this Friday (28), showing that, in one year, the increase in workers’ income was 3.6%.
The previous record was for the quarter ending in January 2025, with R$ 3,365.
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The values are deflated, meaning they take into account the accumulated inflation during the period, allowing the comparison to reflect the real purchasing power of the worker.
The IBGE survey assesses the behavior in the labor market for people aged 14 years or older and considers all forms of employment, whether formal or informal, temporary, and self-employed, for example.
The survey indicated that, for the quarter ending in February, the unemployment rate was 6.8%.
Formality Increases Income
The survey coordinator, Adriana Beringuy, emphasizes that part of the record average income can be explained by the reduction of informality in the labor market.
The informality rate ─ workers who do not have guaranteed rights such as vacations, contributions to the Social Security, and 13th salary ─ had a “slight reduction”, falling to 38.1% of the employed population.
In the quarter ending November 2024, it was at 38.7%.
“If today, in my employed population, I have a higher proportion of formal workers than there was previously, it is expected that this average [income] increases, given that, in general, formal workers have higher incomes than informal ones,” she explains.
The researcher further contextualizes that the total number of employed was 102.7 million people, 1.2% lower than the period ending in November.
The grouping of public administration, defense, social security, education, human health, and social services was responsible for the subtraction of 468,000 jobs.
Beringuy stresses that this number represents a seasonal behavior of public administration, which dismisses temporary workers at the beginning of the year.
“It was the segment of the public sector with the lowest earnings, those of temporary contracts,” she said, referring to workers in the basic education area.
Thus, with the cut of people with lower salaries, the average income tends to increase.
The adjustment of the minimum wage to R$ 1,518 at the beginning of the year was another factor that contributed, to a lesser extent, to the record income of workers.
According to Beringuy, the adjustment serves as a reference for income even for those without a formal contract.
“The minimum wage is an important benchmark in the labor market, especially among informal workers.”
Wage Mass Hits Record
Another record figure reported by the IBGE is the wage mass, which reached R$ 342 billion.
The amount consists of the sum of all values that workers receive and serves as a driving force of the economy.
In one year, this total grew by 6.2% (an increase of R$ 20 billion).
Contribution To Social Security Grows
According to the IBGE, the quarter ending in February 2025 had 67.6 million workers contributing to social security.
This number does not include only workers with formal contracts.
“There can be a self-employed worker who contributes to the social security institute,” Beringuy exemplifies.
This contingent represents that 65.9% of the employed contributed to social security institutes, the highest percentage since the quarter ending in July 2020 (66.1%).
“The decline of informality and, consequently, the increase of formal work proportion contributed to this expansion of social security coverage,” explains the coordinator of the IBGE.
The peak of contribution to social security was in June 2020 (66.5%).
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