Infamous Political Misuse of Data – Opinion

President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has made distrust a necessary element for citizens to evaluate information disclosed by federal agencies and senior government officials, especially the most prominent authorities. Whether intentionally or not, much of this information is or may be incorrect. This concerns data from the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (in cells), which the government used as propaganda, trying to hide the scale of the socio-economic crisis. It is now known that the lavish numbers shown by the president and his economy minister, Paulo Gedes, to show the rapid creation of quality jobs last year were wrong. The reality is far less brilliant than what the government is showing. The balance of formal jobs created in 2020 is almost half of the declared one.

After months of denial that there were no underreporting of hiring and firing in the months following the outbreak of the pandemic, the Labor and Welfare Department has finally admitted to what independent researchers have already pointed out since mid-last year. The numbers were wrong. The change in data collection methodology (using information from eSocial) exacerbated the crisis, which reduced the activity of many companies, led to the closure of others and forced many of them to suspend the regular submission of monthly information. The data in the cell is out of date or understated. Hence the need to review it.

The survey found that the creation of formal employment was much lower than stated. In January, the Ministry of Economy announced a net creation of 142,690 formal sector jobs in 2020. As a result of the revision, this number was reduced to 75,883, which is 47% less.

The speeches of the President of the Republic, his sons and senior advisers so often contain half-truths, facts out of context, and outright lies that parts of the public seem to be shielded from the harmful effects of such practices. However, inaccurate or incorrect data processed by government agencies is less common.

Reviewing economic data should not be a political event. But this government even turned statistics into an instrument of political and electoral manipulation. Recently, commenting on the Caged figures, Minister Paulo Gedes said that Brazil is “very fast” creating jobs. And he added: “Every three and a half months, we create almost 1 million jobs.”

The contrast between the Caged data and data calculated by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in its Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) was clear, showing the existence of some 13 million unemployed and millions of other disenchanted or underemployed. … Lacking any technical arguments to explain this discrepancy, Gedes said that “BIGS is still at the age of a chipped stone.” Fortunately, unlike a minister, responsible labor market researchers know where to look for reliable data.