Brazil’s Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and the Fight Against Hunger announced a new study by Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) on October 1. The research examines formal employment flows from January 2023 through July 2026 using administrative records from the General Register of Employed and Unemployed Persons, known as Caged. According to the ministry’s account of the study, Bolsa Família beneficiaries represented 85.18% of the country’s net increase in formal jobs over that period. The share is calculated against the period’s overall net gain. It is not presented as a causal estimate showing that the programme itself created those jobs.

The records covered 91.8 million hires and 86.4 million separations during the period, leaving a positive net balance of 5.38 million formal jobs. The FGV result reported by the ministry attributes 4.58 million of that balance to Bolsa Família recipients. Hiring and separation counts are flows and can include movements by the same person across different jobs; 91.8 million therefore does not mean that many distinct people found work. Nor is the net balance the same measure as the number of formal employees at the beginning or end of the period. The study should be read as an analysis that links employment movements in administrative records with programme-beneficiary status.

The ministry’s report breaks down the beneficiary profile by age, gender, race and colour, and education. People aged 18 to 24 led the net balance among Bolsa Família recipients, with 1.85 million jobs, or 40.52% of that group’s balance. Women accounted for 2.54 million net jobs among beneficiaries, equivalent to 55.40%, while the share for men was 44.60%. In the race-and-colour classification, workers recorded as pardo accounted for 2.87 million jobs, or 62.71% of the beneficiary balance. These labels reflect the categories used in the administrative data described by the ministry.

By education, beneficiaries who had completed secondary school accounted for 3.22 million net jobs, or 78.24% of the balance in that education breakdown. The ministry also reports separate figures for the broader Cadastro Único registry, which is not the same population as Bolsa Família beneficiaries. For example, people aged 18 to 24 represented 46.18% of the net balance in the wider registry, and women represented 52.10%. Keeping these populations separate is necessary when interpreting the percentages and totals.

São Paulo had the largest absolute net balance attributed to programme recipients, at 1.09 million jobs and 23.82% of the total. Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Paraná followed. The ministry said beneficiary hires exceeded separations in every state and the Federal District over the period studied. That finding indicates a positive net balance in all jurisdictions, but does not by itself measure beneficiaries’ share of each state’s total workforce or the quality and durability of the jobs. The announcement does not provide enough methodological detail about matching, classification or job continuity to support broader causal conclusions. The figures here therefore remain tied to the population, period and administrative-record analysis described by the ministry.