Youth turnover in Brazil: job and worker flows and a evaluation of a youth-targeted training program

Abstract

We first document statistics on jobs and worker flows in Brazil, illustrating that youth workers display much higher turnover rates than other age groups. Yet in this first perspective we investigate whether this is an intrinsic characteristic related to the low age of these workers or whether this is a spurious relation due to other turnover determinants which may be correlated with age. The second perspective is to evaluate the impact of a large youth-targeted program, which was substantially increased in 2000, on the formal labor market attachment of its participants. The program is Lei do Aprendiz (Apprentice Act), a targeted active labor market program conducted by the Labor Ministry, which concedes payroll subsidies to firms that hire and train young workers under temporary contracts. Following a suggestion by one of the referees of the first report, this final report is organized as two different papers, each focusing on one of the perspectives described above.