This is a summary of two reports: one published at Washingtonpost.com at February 5, 2012 and was written by Juan Forero, and has the title,¨Expats Lured by Brazil`s Booming Economy.¨ The other was published at Reuters.com at April 6, 2011 and was written by Cesar Bianconi, and has the title: ¨lack of Skilled Labor Hampers Brazil companies.¨ First, I would like to clarify that I have not nothing against imigration, on the contrary, I think workers need to go where there are jobs. This post is to highlighted the need of more investment in education in Brazil.
The number of foreigners residing in Brazil reached 1,5 million last year, up from 961,000 in 2010. Work authorizations shot up 32% in the first 9 months of 2011. Americans have led the way. In addition, 2 million Brazilians who had been living overseas have returned home.
Those arriving here clearly have an adventurous streak. But they also made their decisions based on pragmatic considerations: Brazil has grown by 4.4% a year since 2004. It has also received about $ 200 billion in foreign direct investment in the past 6 years. And despite the formidable red tape for foreign workers, this country has an increasingly diverse economy with room for those in finance, engineering, web design, petro-engineering and other.
¨When you are talking about skilled labor, there is a huge lack of supply, so as a result if you have the courage to come down to Brazil, or have the language skills, it is not a no-brainer to come here¨, said Jonathan Rosenthal, 31, who runs a capital management firm with a Brazilian partner.
In Belo Horizonte, Google has actively sought engineers for its research unit, about 10% are foreigners. ¨The economy is growing faster than the university engineering departments in the country¨, said Ribeiro Neto Google`s engineering director.
Other foreigners here, like David Bailey, a Briton who lives in Rio with three other Europeans, are joining the growing world of internet startups.
7 in every 10 Brazilian companies are currently facing a shortage of skilled workers. The national industry confederation ( CNI ) poll over 1,600 companies found the shortage are making manufactures less competitive relative to peers abroad.
One major issue is the precarious state of Brazil`s primary and secondary education.
¨What brings the attention is the fact that companies are feeling the pinch of something that universities and other specialized education institutions are too, the poor quality of basic education¨, says Renato Fonseca, head of research of CNI.
That underscores a challenge for Brazil to keep growing ahead. About 78% of companies are investing on their own training programs to overcome the lack of specialized labor, CNI said.
The ministry of education budget for 2010 was 60 billion reais, twice as much that of 2006. However, public investment in education in the past years was less than 5% of GDP. Some analysts say the Brazilian government should invest at least 7% of GDP a year in order to improve the education system.
