December-February unemployment rate goes down on YoY basis

Brazil’s unemployment rate for the period between December 2017 and February 2018 stood at 12.6%, according to numbers released on Thursday (29 March) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The rate is lower than the one for Dec 2016-Feb 2017, which was 13.2%.

Although high, the rate of unemployment has been falling in recent months with the improvements in economic indexes. Compared to the same period of last year, the amount of people who returned to earning income increased by 2%, meaning approximately 1.7 million people overcame unemployment.

As for individual sectors, hiring in the period has increased for the industry (+ 3.3%), food and accommodation (+ 5.5%), information, communication and financial activities (+ 3.3%), government (+ 2.6%), services (+ 9.5%) and household services (+ 4.2 %) sectors.