Brazilian unemployment rate rises to 8.5% in April

Brazil’s unemployment rate rose to 8.5% of the active population in the transition quarter ending in April, just a tenth more than in the previous three months (8.4%), the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said this Wednesday. .

The body responsible for government statistics in Brazil indicated that the number of unemployed between February and April was 9.1 million, up 1.09% from the previous three months (from November 2022 to January 2023).

“This stability is different from what we usually see during this period. The seasonal nature of the moving quarter between February and April is an increase in the unemployment rate due to an increase in the unemployed population, which did not happen this time,” explained Alessandra Brito. , BIGS Poll Analyst.

In a year-to-year comparison, the unemployment rate fell by two percentage points from 10.5% recorded in the February-April 2022 quarter.

Similarly, the number of unemployed fell by 19.9% ​​(less than 2.3 million people) compared with data for the transition quarter ending April 2022.

The employed population, in turn, from February to April was 98 million people, which is 0.6% less (605 thousand people) compared to the quarter from November 2022 to January 2023, which was the previous period in comparative statistics.

The level of informality, i.e. people working without an employment contract, amounted to 38.9% of the employed population, which corresponds to 38 million workers, which is a slight decrease from 39% registered in the previous transition quarter and down by 2.2 percentage points . compared to the same period in 2022.

The unemployment rate is published monthly in Brazil, but a rolling quarter with months prior to the reporting period is considered a benchmark.