Brazil jobless rate dips from pandemic-related record

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's jobless rate has fallen slightly to 14.3 percent after setting three straight record highs because of the coronavirus pandemic, the government said Tuesday.

That figure for the August-October period in Latin America's largest economy is down 0.3 percentage point from the previous stretch.

Brazil measures its jobless figures in rolling periods of three months.

The decline ended a run of nine straight increases in the unemployment rate here.

There are now 14.1 million unemployed people in Brazil, the government statistics agency IBGE said.

That is 1.7 million more than a year ago, when the jobless rate for the same three month period was 11.6 percent.

The pandemic has killed more than 191,000 people in Brazil, making it the second hardest-hit country in the world, after the United States.

The Brazilian government has forecast that the economy will contract by 4.5 percent this year.

It fell into recession this year because of the health crisis but GDP shot up by 7.7 percent in the third quarter, thanks mainly to aid payments to the 60 million poorest people in Brazil.

But that funding will dry up next year because of budgetary constraints.