Petrobras' departure from Bahia causes unemployment and wage cuts.
The sale of state-owned company assets in the state led to a decrease in the number of jobs and the average wage of workers.
Aepet - With Petrobras' departure from the state of Bahia, the oil and gas sector has suffered one of the worst crises in job and income generation in its history. According to data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) by IBGE, using the annual average of the quarters of 2021, while the number of workers in the oil sector in Brazil decreased by 2,4% compared to the average of the previous year (from 159.086 jobs in 2020 to 155.227 in 2021), in the state of Bahia the drop was no less than 28,9% (from 25.877 in 2020 to 18.328 in 2021).
The average income in the sector also fell. According to the PNAD (National Household Sample Survey), while workers in the extraction sector and related support activities suffered an average reduction in their income of approximately 9,5%, in Bahia, the drop in salaries in the oil and gas sector reached 22,9%, falling from an average income level close to R$ 7.180,00 in 2020 to around R$ 5.140,00 in 2021.
Although the pandemic can be considered one of the reasons for the decrease in jobs, the downward trend in the Bahian job market is a phenomenon that has been occurring simultaneously with the beginning of Petrobras' divestment program. That is, since the end of 2015, when the company began to divest a series of assets in the region, such as onshore fields in the Recôncavo basin and the recent sale of the Landulpho Alves Refinery (RLAM) to the Arab fund Mubadala, now renamed the Mataripe Refinery.
When comparing the stock of jobs in the oil and gas sector in Bahia to Petrobras' divestment program, it is possible to observe that in the 3rd quarter of 2015 the sector employed up to 37.890 people in the state. Today, the sector occupies less than 8.760 jobs in the region, according to data from the third quarter of PNAD 2021.
The data presented therefore reveals that, contrary to what some market analysts would have us believe, Petrobras' exit from certain segments has not yet had a positive effect on either the creation of new jobs or increased income. On the contrary, the lack of public investment, reflected in the inefficiency of private initiatives in this sector, raises doubts about the extent to which the disintegration of Petrobras is beneficial for the Brazilian economy in general, and for the economy of Bahia in particular.
Finally, one question remains: who benefits from all this, given that the negative effects of this policy have impacted not only workers in this sector but also the majority of Brazilian consumers?
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