LatinNews Daily - 01 April 2021

* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released the latest unemployment figures, which show that the unemployment rate reached 14.2% in the November 2020-January 2021 quarter, up three percentage points on the same quarter a year earlier. This compares with a 13.9% unemployment rate in the immediately preceding rolling quarter (October-December 2020), the first uptick in the unemployment rate since July-September 2020. The unemployed population now totals 14.3m, the highest figure for the quarter ending in January since current records began in 2012. The employed population has grown somewhat in recent months, increasing by 1.7m between the August-October 2020 rolling quarter and the quarter ending in January, to 86m (although it remains 8.6% below pre-pandemic levels in the quarter to January 2020). Ibge researcher, Adriana Beringuy, notes that this increase is largely due to the growth of the informal sector and an increase in self-employment, with the informality rate now totalling 39.7%.

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