Nonfarm payrolls increased by 559,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said in its closely watched employment report on Friday.
A worker shortage blamed on childcare complications, generous unemployment checks and lingering fears over COVID-19 sharply restrained hiring. There are a record 8.1 million job openings.
The number of Indians living below the poverty line is expected to reach 134 million, which is more than double the 59 million projected prior to the recession
The poverty rate in India rose to 9.7 percent in 2020, a sharp increase from the January 2020 forecast of 4.3 percent
Nonfarm payrolls surged by 916,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. That was be the biggest gain since last August. Data for February was revised higher to show 468,000 jobs created instead of the previously reported 379,000.
Nearly 1.7 million jobs were lost that month, and another 20.7 million would vanish in April.
The main jobless rate dropped to 5.0% in the three months to January from 5.1% in the final quarter of 2020, in contrast to forecasts in a Reuters poll for a small rise to 5.2%.
None of the economists polled had expected a fall.
The unemployment rate stood at 33.3% in the fourth quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, up from 27.1% in the second quarter, when the data was last published. Unemployment of 23.1% was first reported for the third quarter of 2018.
Access Bank, Nigeria's largest lender, cut staff salaries and sacked contract workers accounting for 75% of its 30,000 workforce to save costs, banking sources told Reuters.
The average unemployment rate last year was 13.5%, IBGE said, up from 11.9% the year before and the highest since the series began eight years ago.
The IBGE figures showed 86.2 million Brazilians had work, up 4.5%, or 3.7 million people, from the July-September period, although still down 8.9%, or 8.4 million people, from the same period a year earlier.
The Labor Department said on Friday nonfarm payrolls increased by 49,000 jobs last month. Data for December was revised to show 227,000 jobs lost instead of 140,000 as previously reported.
The unemployment rate was at 6.3% in January. The jobless rate has been understated by people misclassifying themselves as being "employed but absent from work."
Restrictions, including the closure of shops and restaurants and a ban on travel and home visits, were dropped for most of December but reimposed late in that month following a surge in infections.
Excluding those on the emergency Pandemic Unemployment Payment, 5.8% of the workforce were registered as unemployed in January.
South Korean president last week pledged to expand support for those vulnerable to job insecurity, including temporary workers, daily labourers and youth.
And while the Labor Department data showed the unemployment rate dipped to 6.7 from 6.9 percent, the lowest since the pandemic struck, 10.7 million workers remain unemployed.