Unemployment in Brazil rises to 7.8%, as expected, reports PNAD, from IBGE By Investing.com

Investing.com – In Brazil, it reached 7.8% in the quarter ended in February, as expected by the market, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) recently reported in the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD). In the quarter ended in January, the indicator was 7.6%.

“This increase in the unemployment rate in the first two months was already expected, given the seasonality of the job market, as there is a return of people looking for jobs again at the beginning of the year”, explains Rafael Perez, economist at Suno Research .

However, the unemployment rate fell 0.7 percentage points (pp) compared to the quarter ended in February 2023, when it was 8.6%.

Source: Investing.com

The usual real income from all jobs was R$3,110. The value represents an increase of 1.1% in the quarter and 4.3% in the annual comparison. Furthermore, a new record in the historical series for the usual real income volume, which reached R$307.3 billion, although without significant variation in the quarter. The annual increase was 6.7%.

“The reading shows a still resilient job market, whose rising income is the biggest reflection of this”, points out Maykon Douglas, economist at Highpar, who believes that the Central Bank should be aware of these impacts on inflationary indicators.

The institute reported that the unemployed population reached 8.5 million people, with an increase of 4.1% in the quarter and an annual drop of 7.5%. Meanwhile, the employed population totaled 100.250 million, without significant variation in the quarter. Compared to the same period last year, there was an expansion of 2.2%.

According to the survey, the occupancy level fell compared to the previous moving quarter, when it was 57.4%, to 57.1%, but rose compared to 56.4% in the same period last year. The employment level represents the percentage of employed people in the population of working age.

Meanwhile, underutilization reached 17.8%, an increase of 0.5 pp in the quarter and an annual decrease of 1 pp. The data is based on the underutilized population, which reached the level of 20.6 million people, a quarterly expansion of 3.4% and a drop of 4.5% in one year.

The PNAD indicated a new record in the number of employees with a work permit in the private sector, excluding domestic workers, which was 37.995 million, with no major quarterly variation, but an annual increase of 3.2%.

The level of self-employed workers, which reaches 25.4 million people, demonstrated stability compared to the quarter and the previous year.

Furthermore, the informality rate increased from 39.2% in the previous moving quarter to 38.7% of the employed population. In the same period last year, it was 38.9%.

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