RIO DE JANEIRO: Virus-hit Brazil's unemployment rate rose to 13.3 percent in the April-June quarter, its highest in three years, according to official figures released Thursday that show 8.9 million jobs lost during the period due to the pandemic. The figure represents a rise of 1.1 percentage points over the previous quarter, and is the highest since the March-May 2017 quarter, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Most Brazilian states began lifting lockdown measures in June, although the country's Covid-19 death toll is approaching 100,000 - the second highest tally in the world.
The IBGE said 12.8 million people are looking for work in Latin America's biggest economy, while 83.3 million Brazilians were employed in the second quarter, 9.6 percent less than in the first.
"Of the 8.9 million people who lost their jobs, 6 million were working in the informal sector," without an employment contract or the equivalent, IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy said in a release. Nearly a quarter of the jobs lost - 2.1 million - were in the trade sector, hit particularly hard by lockdown measures aimed at containing the pandemic.