A phone screen glows yellow with the Bolsa Família app, opened in the queue at a bank branch, at the counter of a corner shop, in the hand of someone waiting for the bus before sunrise. According to a study by FGV (Fundacao Getulio Vargas, one of Brazil's leading research institutions), that same base of millions of Brazilians now shows up in the country's formal payroll records too: between January 2023 and July 2026, Brazil generated a net balance of almost 4.6 million formal jobs for beneficiaries of the cash transfer program.
The figure is the difference between hiring and layoffs recorded among Bolsa Família participants during the period, which covers President Lula's third term. According to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, which reported the study, there were 15.3 million hirings against 10.8 million dismissals. The balance equals 85.2% of all formal jobs created in Brazil in the same stretch, a total of 5.4 million, a figure also highlighted by the newspaper O Globo.
Program beneficiaries accounted for 16.7% of all hirings in the country during the period, out of 91.8 million, and for 12.5% of dismissals, which reached 86.4 million. For the study's authors, researchers Valdemar Pinho Neto and Luiz Gustavo Barbosa, the data points to productive inclusion of the group and contradicts the frequent criticism that the benefit keeps recipients away from the labor market.
"The criticism that people on Bolsa Familia do not want to work is not a valid criticism when you look at the numbers," Pinho Neto told Folha.
What the study does not measure
The survey only shows whether a worker was enrolled in the program at the moment of hiring or dismissal. It does not say whether the person kept receiving the benefit after being hired, which would require cross-referencing declared income. Under current rules, it is possible to work and remain on Bolsa Família as long as per capita family income stays within the R$ 218 monthly cap.
The researchers' goal, according to Folha, was to shed light on a topic that keeps returning to Brazil's political debate, usually wrapped in suspicion toward those who receive the aid. The newly published numbers point the other way: the same hand holding the yellow phone screen in the bank queue is the one signing the work card, and there are millions of them, every month, since early 2023.