*Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released its unemployment figures for the first quarter of 2024, showing a jobless rate of 7.9%. The number of unemployed people in Brazil during this period was 8.6m, up 6.7% from the previous quarter, while the number of employed people totalled 100.2m, registering a quarterly drop of 0.8%. The latest jobless rate marks an increase of 0.5 percentage points from Q4 2023 but is down 0.9 percentage points compared to the same quarter last year. However, the Ibge highlighted in a press release that the quarterly rise in unemployment could be due to seasonal trends, with Q1 often registering a higher jobless rate than Q4.