08/12/2008 15h25
Salary mass holds retail sales up and ease deceleration
Valor Econômico - 08/12/2008
The expressive growth of the salary mass has been essential to stimulate retail sales. Together with the improvement in the quality of jobs, with the strong increase in the number of formal jobs, the increase of the salary mass should be important to ease the deceleration cycle of the economy expected for the next months, even if the increase of employment and income lose energy from now on. The vigor of the work market is clear when the evolution of the nominal salary mass is analyzed from December 2005 to May this year: in the period, it grew 25.9%, a fundamental expansion to explain the 27.2% increase registered by the nominal income of retail in the period. The nominal efficiency of the work, on its turn, had an 18.9% increase, showing that employment had an important role in the increase of the nominal mass. The positive moment for retail is also due to the strong increase of credit in recent years, but analysts point out that the very expansion in loans and financings results, to a great extent, from the advances in the work market. The improvement of work and income gives the consumer more confidence to enter into credit operations, as remarks Thaís Marzola Zara, from
Rosenberg & Associados. The growing formalization of employment has a crucial role, adds Thaís. The expansion in consumption is more solid than if it were based on an increase of the indebtedness without a compatible growth in jobs and income. In 2006 and 2007, the real mass grew 6.4% and 6.3%, respectively. For this year, it is expected a deceleration in the growth rhythm. As it is seen, the higher inflation must advance over an even greater part of the income gains of the workers in the rest of the year, falling from 2.2% in the 12 months until June to 1.5% in the accumulated in 2008. Thaís says that in the second half, with the labor agreement of some important workers' categories, there may be some recovery of the real income, but not to the point of overcoming the contribution of the employment to the growth of the salary mass. According to her, it is possible that the growth of the mass this year remains at nearly 5%.
