Influência da pandemia da covid-19 nos empregos do setor de alimentação do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

The pandemic of the new coronavirus affected society in different scales, some economic sectors needed to close their doors during certain periods, while others had to adjust to a completely different reality. The prevention measures postulated by the World Health Organization put social distancing, the use of masks, and constant hand hygiene as effective ways to control viral transmission. Thus, sectors that depend on the high circulation of people, such as the food sector, had a reduction in attendance, consumer mistrust in seeking establishments, and accumulation of debts. In order to demonstrate the effects of the pandemic on the food sector, this work aims to review official documents from public agencies of inspection and control the State of Rio Grande do Sul in different moments of the pandemic under aspects related to the opening and closing of food establishments to control the transmission of the disease; to analyze the fluctuations of the labor market related to the food sector; and to correlate these data with general economic data of the state. In order to answer these objectives, documentary analyses of the public control agencies were carried out to verify how the State's public policies influenced the food sector. In a second moment, the characterization of the food sector in the components of restaurants and bars was carried out to analyze the fluctuations suffered in the number of jobs in a time series, before the pandemic, during the health crisis and the recovery period (2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively). A series of decrees and ordinances were instituted by the state to reduce the movement of people and the transmission levels of the disease. Restaurants and bars were allowed to continue their services, but in a controlled manner depending on the flag established for the week in the Controlled Distance regime instituted by decree #55.241/2020. In the most restrictive flag, only 25% of the employees could be in the establishment, but without direct service to the public, only in the delivery modality. The comparison of employment data in the sector between the three years allowed us to verify that the impact of the pandemic was greater in moments of great restrictions and in the initial moment of the arrival of the virus. The volume of jobs in the sector was high in 2019, but with relative stability, while in 2020 the impact of the pandemic's arrival led to distrust and a negative balance of jobs in the first months of the installation of the disease, and in 2021, despite being a year of recovery and positive balance of jobs, there were moments of intense crisis. By correlating the data of jobs obtained from the food sector with the data from the rest of the economic sectors in RS we could observe direct statistical significance of the behavior in the number of jobs in the state's economy in general. The pandemic brought challenges even to sectors that did not stop completely, which had to adapt and change their practices, to be opened and maintain the jobs.