BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s unemployment rate held steady at a historic high of 14.7% in the three months through April, figures showed on Wednesday, with the rate of deterioration in the labor market continuing to slow from a year ago.
The unemployment rate was unchanged from the quarter ending in March, although statistics agency IBGE’s comparisons with the three months through January indicated a softer market amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The picture was one of stability in the employed population, and growth of the unemployed population, with more pressure on the labor market,” said IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy.
The 14.7% unemployment rate is the highest since IBGE’s series began in 2012, and as has consistently been the case for almost a year now, less than 50% of the working population have a job, the figures showed.
IBGE said that the number of people officially unemployed was 14.8 million, up 489,000 from the three months through January. There are now 3.3 million fewer Brazilians in work than before the pandemic struck over a year ago, IBGE said.
Some 85.9 million Brazilians had work in April, IBGE said, little changed from the previous quarter but down 3.7%, or 3.3 million people, from the same period a year earlier.
The number of people entirely out of the workforce held steady at 76.4 million, IBGE said, but that was up more than 5.5 million people, or 7.7%, from a year earlier.
IBGE said that the number of discouraged workers held steady at a series high of 6 million, while the number of under-utilized workers rose by 2.7% from the prior quarter to 33.3 million. Discouraged workers is the term given to people not actively looking for a job or who have not found one after a long time, usually because they have given up looking.
The under-employment rate rose to 29.7% from 29.0% in the November-January period, IBGE said.
(Reporting by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
