Unemployment in Brazil drops 10.5% to 7-year low for April quarter

Unemployment in Brazil fell to 10.5 per cent in the February to April period, the lowest since 2015, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said.

The figure means that 11.3 million people are out of work, according to the IBGE report on Tuesday.

The unemployment rate decreased 0.7 percentage points compared to the previous three months (November to January), when the rate was 11.2 per cent, and decreased 4.3 percentage points compared to the same period in 2020, Xinhua news agency reported.

Those figures mean that the number of jobless decreased by 699,000 people compared to the previous three months, and by 3.8 million people compared to the same period in 2021, said the report.

The number of employed persons reached 96.5 million, the highest figure since records began being kept in 2012, up 1.1 per cent (1.1 million people) from the previous three months and 10.3 per cent (9 million people) from a year ago.

The February-April figure shows that "we are experiencing the continuation of the process of a shrinking unemployment rate, which has been happening since the three-month period ending in July 2021," the IBGE said.

The informality rate stood at 40.1 per cent of the employed population in the three-month period, equivalent to 38.7 million people, according to the report.

Earnings in this period averaged 2,569 reals (nearly $545), which was stable compared to the previous three-month period, but 7.9 per cent lower compared to the same period in 2021.

--IANS

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