MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil: Unemployment in November hits lowest figures since 2014

IBGE's Beringuy highlighted “the expansion of employment through various economic activities”

Unemployment in South America's largest country reached 6.1% in the quarter ending last month, Agencia Brasil reported Friday citing figures from Brazil's Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). It was the lowest rate in this time series dating back to the first quarter of 2012.

 The figure is down 0.5 percentage points from the June–August quarter when it stood at 6.6%, and down 1.4 percentage points from the same quarter in 2023 when it was 7.5%. The new data represented 6.8 million Brazilians looking for work—the lowest figure since the quarter ending in December 2014. In one quarter, 510,000 people left unemployment.

The survey also showed that the unemployment rate reached 8.8 percentage points below the series' peak of 14.9% in the quarter ending in September 2020. The number of jobless people is 55.6% below the series record of 15.3 million, which was reached in the first quarter of 2021. Both periods were during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The number of employed people totaled 103.9 million—a new record for Brazil. Previously, this population had fallen to the lowest level in the time series, amounting to 82.6 million in the quarter ending in August 2020. Since then, there has been a surge of 25.8%, equivalent to 21.3 million more Brazilians in the labor market.

November's data also meant that Brazil has a record among those employed in the private sector—53.5 million—and among workers with a formal contract, who amounted to 39.1 million. In the public sector, workers numbered 12.8 million. In addition, the proportion of people aged 14 or over who were working also hit a record 58.8%.

“The year 2024 is heading for record expansion in the Brazilian labor market, driven by the growth in the number of formal and informal employees,” said IBGE’s Survey Coordinator Adriana Beringuy.

Regarding workers without a formal contract, the number did not change significantly and remained at 14.4 million. The total number of self-employed workers, in turn, rose by 1.8% in the quarter, or 25.9 million, and remained stable throughout the year.

Standing at 38.7%, the informality rate was tantamount to 40.3 million workers. “This rate is slightly lower than that registered in the previous quarter [38.8%] and was lower than that of the same period in 2023 [39.2%],” the study also read.

The rise in employment was driven by four of the ten activity groups surveyed. Industry rose by 2.4% (or 309,000 more people); construction expanded by 3.6% (269,000 more people); public administration, defense, social security, education, human health, and social services advanced by 1.2% (215,000 more people); and household services went up by 3% (174,000 more people). The sum of these activities represented a gain of 967,000 workers in the quarter.

“The expansion of employment through various economic activities has allowed both workers in elementary occupations and those in more advanced professional services to be in demand, expanding the general level of employment among the working population,” Beringuy also pointed out.

Compared to the same period in 2023, the increase was seen in seven groups: general industry (3.6%, or 466,000 more people); construction (6.0%, or 440,000 more people); trade, repair of motor vehicles, and motorcycles (3.6%, or 692,000 more people); transportation, storage, and mail (5.8%, or 322,000 more people); information, communication, and financial, real estate, professional, and administrative activities (4.4%, or 548,000 more people); public administration, defense, social security, education, human health, and social services (4.4%, or 790,000 more people); and other services (5%, or 270,000 more people). “Combined, these seven economic activities gained an additional 3.5 million workers compared to the same period in 2023,” the IBGE document mentioned.

In the same comparison, agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, and aquaculture fell by 4.4%, or 358,000 fewer people, while the other groups remained stable.