[malandrew]

> the rise of precarious work

I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is.

Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work.

Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work.

The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.

[marcosdumay]

It's not that simple, because up to some point, precarious work outcompetes non-precarious work, reducing the later one.

You will see all kinds of arguments and researches, but actually nobody is really sure about what that point is, and if it is a net positive or negative for workers. To make it worse, Brazil is in a kind of unique situation because official work is extremely regulated, while precarious work is well accepted and widespread (and not as new as you think), so one can not even apply the lessons from most of the world.