* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released its latest figures on the country’s unemployment rate, which stood at 14.6% in the March-May rolling quarter. This represents a 1.7 percentage-point year-on-year increase in the unemployment rate, and is up from 14.4% in the December 2020-February 2021 rolling quarter; however, it represents an incremental decrease from the unemployment rate recorded in the two immediately preceding rolling quarters, ending in March and April 2021, when unemployment stood at a record 14.7%. The unemployed population has remained largely unchanged from the previous rolling quarter at 14.8m in the March-May period.
Adriana Beringuy, an Ibge researcher, explained that when the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit last year, many people stopped looking for work and thus left the labour market; but as initial coronavirus restrictions were lifted and sectors of the economy re-opened, so too the working-age population began looking for work again, swelling the ranks of the unemployed in recent months.
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