During the nineties the unemployment rate and the household retirement income per capita rose sharply in Brazil. It happened in a more intense way for the unskilled workers than for the other groups. According to the argument of this paper, the increase in household retirement income could have affected workers reservation wage, augmenting their wage pressure. In this way, wage pressure changes could have implied higher unemployment and long-term unemployment rates. The empirical evidence, using PNAD data from 1981 to 1999, shows that household retirement income has a positive effect on the unemployment rate and on the long-term unemployment rate for unskilled workers.
