By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The unemployment rate in Brazil increased slightly in November to 4.8 percent last month, according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). November’s results were 0.1 percent higher than that registered in October, when the unemployment rate was of 4.7 percent and 0.2 percent higher than in November of 2013, when the rate was of 4.6 percent.
According to Adriana Araujo Beringuy, IBGE’s coordinator for labor and income, although there was an increase in the number of jobs position made available, the increased number of persons who in November started to look for work increased the unemployment rate.
Nonetheless throughout 2014 analysts have seen a significant increase of those who are working-age but are non-economically active. In November this part of the population that is not working and not actively looking for work totaled 18.9 million.
“We have seen that during 2014 this non-economically active population has grown significantly in the metropolitan regions of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, especially Rio and São Paulo. (…) and among the groups we see that they are women, older persons and the very young,” said Beringuy. According to the IBGE analyst this is the first month this year this segment increased less than two percent.
Among the six main metropolitan regions of Brazil surveyed by the IBGE (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Salvador and Porto Alegre), Salvador was the region with the highest unemployment rate – 9.6 percent. Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre were the regions with the lowest rates, 3.6 percent and 4.2 percent respectively. In the other regions no significant variations were observed.
The number of unemployed persons in these areas total approximately 1.2 million, while the number of employed persons was estimated at 23.4 million. Unemployed persons are categorized at the IBGE as people who are actively looking for work but unable to find a job.
The number of employed persons in the private sector in these six regions increased slightly from 11.7 percent to 11.8 percent, according to the institute. The survey also showed that the average monthly wages for those workers in the six metropolitan areas increased in November to R$2,148.50, up by 0.7 percent from October 2014 and increase of 2.7 percent from November of 2013.