RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's unemployment rate hit 12 percent between October and December, another record high, official data showed Tuesday even as the economy is forecast to slowly exit deep recession.
That amounted to 12.3 million people looking for work at the end of 2016, a third more than in the last quarter a year earlier, the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics said.
Market analysts with Gradual Investimentos consultants had predicted the unemployment rate would hold at the previous quarter's 11.9 percent, which was also a record high.
Joblessness has dented the popularity of the market-friendly government of President Michel Temer, who took over last year after the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff with promises to restore the Latin American giant's economy to health.
In the final quarter of 2015 -- still under Rousseff's administration -- unemployment was nine percent, while a year earlier it had been 6.5 percent.
Brazil's economy shrank 3.8 percent in 2015 and is expected to have contracted a further 3.5 percent in 2016, the worst recession in a century.
The central bank predicts a return to economic growth of 0.8 percent next year after two years of deep recession -- although the International Monetary Fund foresees growth of just 0.2 percent.
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