Brazil’s unemployment continues to fall to new seven-year low

BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s unemployment continued to fall in the three months from September to November 2022, hitting a new seven-year low of 8.1 percent, official figures published on Thursday showed.

It is the sixth successive rolling quarter that unemployment figures have fallen, reaching the lowest figure since April 2015.

With 8.7 million people seeking employment, that is 3.7 million fewer than a year ago, the IBGE statistics institute said.

Unemployment in Latin America’s biggest economy is down 0.8 percent on the previous rolling quarter, and 3.5 percent down on the equivalent period in 2021, when unemployment sat at 11.6 percent.

Brazil continues to recover from the economic crash caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which employment soared to a high of 14.7 percent in the first quarter of 2021.

The improved figures come from the end of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro’s term in office.

He was replaced January 1 by veteran socialist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who narrowly defeated Bolsonaro in October’s fractious elections.

Lula has promised to improve the spending power of the lowest paid workers and to boost social programs.

Real revenues jumped three percent compared to the previous rolling quarter and were up 7.1 percent on the equivalent period in 2021.

But 38.8 million out of Brazil’s 215 million population work in the informal sector, mostly without an employment contract and in precarious conditions.