YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This work has the purpose to analyze the youth unemployment structure in Brazil,trying to identify the reasons for the youth unemployment rate being so superiorrelative to the unemployment of adults. Despite its importance, this subject hasreceived less attention in the Brazilian labor market Iiterature. In the first analysisf this work, the unemployment rate will be decomposed into two determinants,mean duration and inflow rate for young, adult and old people; it is noticed that theunemployment duration is practically the same for the three categories, but the you-th inflow rate is relatively higher than the other two ones, being so, the determinantthat makes youth unemployment be higher than unemployment of older workers;nd, with a new decomposition of youth inflow rate, it is verified that about 80% ofthis rate is composed of young people that have already worked. Another methodwill be the ca1culus, for young and adult people, of the transition matrices betweenlabor market states. To evaluate where is the  azilian youth unemployment,it is reca1culated these rates for each one of the categories, substituting oneat a time in the matrices, the transition probabilities of the other category; resultsshow the high turnover of the category in labor market. With these results, it isconcluded that the reason of the high youth unemployment is not the difficulty offinding the first job.