Brazil, the twelfth largest economy in the world according to GDP, saw its unemployment rate fall in the final quarter of 2020, closing the year at 13.9%, down from the 14.1% registered in the third quarter of the year.
The decline in Brazilian unemployment underlines the fact that Brazil’s economic recovery is continuing, despite the 2020 yearly average jobless rate figure being the highest since 2012.
Statistics agency IBGE reported on Friday that the number of Brazilians officially unemployed in the three months to December declined slightly to 13.9 million from 14.1 million in three months prior, which was down from the record 14.6% registered in the second quarter of the year.
Brazil’s unemployment figures were released just a day after it was confirmed that Brazil’s death toll from Covid-19 passed 250,000 the second-highest worldwide, after the United States.
Despite there being many positives in the Brazilian economy and plenty of reasons why Brazil’s record unemployment is not a cause for panic, unemployment is still a major concern as Brazil’s economy struggles to rally from the economic havoc of Covid-19 whilst the second wave of the pandemic looks like impacting Brazil more than the first.
Analysts predict the economy will make a modest recovery in 2021, with growth of 3.29 percent. However, that figure has been revised lower, down 0.2 percentage point from a just month ago.
Lowest Since 2012
IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy said in a statement:
“For the first time in the annual series, less than half the working-age population was occupied in the country,”
“In 2020, the level was 49.4 percent,”
IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy
The annual average of the employed population in 2020 was the lowest since 2012 at 86.1 million, as well as 7.9 percent lower compared to the 2019 average.
The IBGE also reported that the average informal employment rate fell from 41.1 percent in 2019 to 38.7 percent in 2020.
