in adequate locations. About 28 percent of them are con-, ducted from their owner's residence while 27 percent use the client's home as its place of doing business. Nine percent just use the streets and other public places and another 5.5 percent use a vehicle. Sixty-six percent cif them have no work permit and, consequently, also do not pay neither taxes nor fees related to their enterprises. These are non-stop businesses, with the vast majority of them (91 percent) keeping workers busy the whole year. As in the formal job market at large, the informal one is not favorable to women. While monthly earnings average $135 in the area as a whole, this amount is only $120 for women. Compare this to $140 for men, who hold 64 percent of all informal jobs. Sixty-six percent of all owners are also male who make an average of $310 a month. The majority of• informal workers (66 percent) have been doing this for more than three years and are neither looking for nor interested in a regular job. With their low educational level, they would be making less than two minimum wages ($144) anyway. The image conveyed by the IBGE is a mirror of Brazil's larger picture, showing the same economic disparities between the different regions of the country. Almost half of the informal businesses (46 percent) are in the rich Southeast, where the average monthly profit is $435. In the Northeast, on the other hand, where profits are the lowest, this average is $181. Profits are almost six times bigger in the South where they average $958. For 10% of those with an informal occupation, this job is just a way to complement their earnings from working in a regular job. In some cases, they can even make more in their own business, but prefer to keep their jobs as a way to feel more stable as well as to secure pension and health benefits. A study released in the last week of June by Rio's Municipal Secretariat of Work show that self-employed people were the ones most favored from 1994 to 1997, following the introduction of the Real Plan. Their average monthly earnings grew from $163 in June 1994 when the Real Plan started to $241 in 1997. This amount fell to $215 in the first quarter of this year. Among the reasons were the devaluation of the real and the stagnation of the informal sector that is not being able to absorb all the new unemployed. The informal sector, however, is the one that grew the most between 1991 and 1998. While self-employed people represented 26.2 percent of all workers in the Greater Rio in 1998, this number has increased by 4.3 percent since then. Commenting on the recent fall of the real in Jornal do Brasil, economist Marcelo Ned from the IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Economica Aplicada—Institute of Applied Economic Research) said, "We have here a pro-industry and not pro-services fact, and this does not generate jobs in Rio." To what Andre Urani, another expert, added: "The creation of the real Plan give us conditions to think about the economic future of the country. In order to achieve a reversal in the situation brought about by these five years of real, we heed to defme what kind of growth we are looking for: one that includes or one that excludes people." 50,000 in Line Brazil has 6.6 million—one third of the population living in the state of Sao Paulo alone—unemployed people right now. For some experts the situation is so desperate that BRAZZIL - JUNE 1999
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