RIO DE JANEIRO: Unemployment in Brazil rose in the three months through February, statistics agency IBGE said on Friday, as the number of jobless people in the country soared to a record 14.4 million, the highest since records began being kept in 2012.

According to IBGE, the jobless rate was 14.4% in the three months ending Feb. 28, up 2.7 percentage points from the same three-month period a year ago, when it was 11.6%.

Some 85.9 million Brazilians had work in February, IBGE said, stable from the prior three-month period, although still down 8.3% or 7.8 million people from the same period a year earlier.