BRAZIL |
Unemployment falls but labour market still fragile. Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) released new figures on unemployment on 30 September, which show that the unemployment rate in the rolling quarter ending in July fell to 13.7%. This is one percentage point down from the record 14.7% unemployment the country recorded in the rolling quarter ending in April and fractionally below than the 13.8% unemployment rate recorded over the same period a year earlier. The number of unemployed remains high, however, with 14.1m people searching for work compared with 13.1m in July 2020. The employment rate in the May-July rolling quarter rose to 50.2% (equivalent to 89m people), the first time since April 2020 that it has crossed the 50% threshold. But this increase in the employment rate is largely sustained by jobs in the precarious informal sector, with the informality rate standing at 40.8% in July, up from 39.8% in the February-April rolling quarter and 37.4% a year earlier. Meanwhile, workers’ average real income has fallen by 8.8% compared with last year.
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