Brazil: Unemployment returned to pre-pandemic level

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The unemployment rate in Brazil was 11.2% of the economically active population in the quarter ended in January, the lowest for this period in the last six years, thus returning to the level it had before the crisis generated by the pandemic, the Government informed on March 18.

Although it grew slightly compared to the 11.1% measured in the quarter ended in December due to the termination of temporary contracts that Brazil traditionally opens for the Christmas season, the unemployment rate in the quarter ended in January fell more than three points compared to the same period last year (14.5%).

It is also more than three and a half points below that recorded in the first quarter of last year (14.9%), when unemployment reached its record level in Brazil as a consequence of the crisis generated by the pandemic, according to data released today by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Despite the sharp reduction in the unemployment rate last year caused by the resumption of activities and Brazil’s economic recovery after the pandemic, South America’s largest economy still has 12 million unemployed people.

However, the current number of unemployed is 6.6% lower than in the quarter ended October last year, which means that Brazil generated 859,000 new jobs in the last quarter.

Compared to the quarter ended January 2021, the number of unemployed registered a drop of 18.3%, from 14.7 million to 12 million, meaning that 2.7 million Brazilians gained new jobs in the last year.

This recovery was mainly driven by formal hiring, which raised the number of formally employed Brazilians from 31.7 million in the quarter ended in January 2021 to 34.6 million in the quarter ended in January this year, equivalent to an increase of 9.3% (2.9 million new formally employed workers).

With information from EFE

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