Novo coronavírus
Employment and inflation data collection by phone or Internet during the pandemic
March 19, 2020 01h00 PM | Last Updated: March 20, 2020 09h03 AM
The suspension of the face-to-face interviews for the Continuous PNAD and IPCA will not interrupt the data dissemination on employment and inflation. As of today, IBGE survey agents will proceed the collection by phone or through the Internet, following the recommendations of the Ministry of Health regarding the context of public health emergency caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Continuous PNAD
Due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, the IBGE has interrupted the face-to-face data collection of the Continuous PNAD, a survey which measures the Brazilian unemployment rate and another set of critical information for the design of public policies. The institute asks everyone’s full cooperation so as to answer the calls of the collection agents, who are working to carry out the survey.
IPCA
Concerning the IPCA, which measures the official inflation of the country, the data collection will be carried out manually through the Internet, comprising the same products, makes, models and trading strategies as those usually surveyed. The replacement of the face-to-face collection with the manual online one will encompass the subitems of the groups of food and beverages at home, personal hygiene and cleaning articles, household articles, women’s and men’s apparel, food away from home (bars and restaurants).
The samples of the points of sale already include price collection for e-commerce and physical stores of the retail trade for: electronic products (computers, cell phones, TVs, etc.), durable goods in general (refrigerators, washing machines, etc.), books, magazines, stationery, newspapers, etc. In such cases, the collection will also be exclusively done through the Internet, carried out manually by the researchers, in all covered areas. As the IBGE has already informed, prices of airfares and of transportation apps will remain being collected by webscraping.
Each and every option or possibility concerning new alternative methods for price collection will be tested beforehand to be validated by the IBGE’s qualified technical team, following the best methodological recommendations, in order to guarantee the preservation of the inflation’s time series.
