In the quarter ended in October, Brazil reached an unemployment rate of 5.4%. It is the lowest index recorded in the historical series of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), started in 2012.
The three-month period also ended with a record in the number of people with a formal contract and in the average worker’s income.
The data is part of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad) released this Friday (28).
Research highlights:
– Unemployment in the quarter ending in October fell to 5.4%. In the previous moving quarter, ending in September, it was 5.6%. In the quarter ending in October 2024, the rate was 6.2%.
The highest rate ever recorded was 14.9%, reached in two periods: in the moving quarters ending in September 2020 and March 2021, both during the covid-19 pandemic.
– The number of employed people reached 5.910 million, the lowest number in the historical series. This total number of people represents a drop of 11.8% (788 thousand fewer people looking for a job) compared to the same quarter in 2024.
– The total number of employed persons with a formal contract reached 39.182 million, another record in the survey.
– Workers’ income: reached R$3,528, the highest value recorded in the IBGE historical series.
Job market
The IBGE survey investigates behavior in the labor market for people aged 14 or over and takes into account all forms of occupation, whether with or without a formal contract, temporary and self-employed, for example.
According to the institute’s criteria, only a person who actually looked for a vacancy 30 days before the search is considered unemployed. 211 thousand homes are visited in all states and the Federal District.
Caged
The Pnad was released the day after another indicator of labor market behavior, the General Register of Employed and Unemployed Persons (Caged), prepared by the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) and which only monitors the scenario of employees with a formal contract.
According to Caged, October had a positive balance of 85.1 thousand formal vacancies. In 12 months, the balance is positive at 1.35 million jobs with a formal contract.
