LatinNews Daily - 23 November 2023

* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released its latest unemployment figures, which showed a jobless rate of 7.7% in the third quarter of 2023, marking a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from Q2 and a decrease of 1.0 percentage point from Q3 2022. The quarterly drop in national unemployment was mainly driven by three states. São Paulo’s jobless rate fell from 7.8% in Q2 to 7.1% in Q3; in Maranhão, unemployment fell from 8.8% to 6.7%; while Acre saw the greatest quarterly decrease, from 9.3% to 6.2%. Roraima was the only state to see a significant quarterly rise in unemployment, from 5.1% to 7.6%. The jobless rate in all other states remained relatively stable. In Q3 2023, the states which had the highest unemployment were the north-eastern states of Bahia (13.3%) and Pernambuco (13.2%), and the northern state of Amapá (12.6%). The lowest unemployment figures were registered in the northern state of Rondônia (2.3%), the central-western state of Mato Grosso (2.4%), and the southern state of Santa Catarina (3.6%).