LatinNews Daily - 01 July 2020

* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released the latest employment figures, according to which the country’s unemployment rate rose to 12.9% in the March-May rolling quarter – up from 11.6% in the previous rolling quarter (December 2019-February 2020), and 0.6 percentage points higher than over the same period in 2019. The unemployed population in March-May totalled 12.7m (up 3% on the previous quarter), while the employed population fell by 8.3% to 85.9m. “For the first time in this survey’s historical series, the employment level stood below 50%. This means that less than half of the working-age population is working”, noted Ibge researcher Adriana Beringuy. The underemployment rate reached a record 27.5% (30.4m people), while 9m people left the workforce compared with the previous quarter, bringing the total of the working-age population outside of the workforce to 75m. Beringuy also explained that a decrease in informality levels “is not necessarily a good sign. It means these people are losing employment and not finding another job. They are ending up outside of the workforce”. 

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