Although Brazil’s basic interest rate reached its highest level in almost 20 years in 2025 – which acts as a brake on the economy – the Last year, the country reached the lowest unemployment rate since 2012, when the historical series that measures the evolution of the Brazilian labor market began. The data was released this Friday (30) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
The main reason for this downward behavior in unemployment is family purchases, as assessed by the coordinator of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), Adriana Beringuy.
“We maintain an economy basically driven by family consumption.”
Pnad data reveal that Brazil recorded unemployment rate of 5.6% in 2025. For comparison purposes, in 2024 unemployment had reached 6.6%.
The Brazilian economy reached the annual milestone of 103 million employed workers and 6.2 million people looking for workthose called unemployed by IBGE.
Pnad 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.
Interest amortization
In September 2024, concerned about the growing trajectory of inflation, the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) of the Central Bank (BC) began an escalation of the economy’s basic interest rate, the Selic, then at 10.5% per year, raising it to 15% in June 2025.
The government’s inflation target is 3% over a 12-month period, with a tolerance of 1.5 percentage points (pp) higher or lower.
The official inflation index (IPCA) remained outside the tolerance range for 13 months, practically all of last year.
>> Read here: BC maintains basic interest rates at 15% per year for the fifth time in a row.
Selic influences all other interest rates in the country and, when high, acts restrictively on the economy, that is, it makes credit operations more expensive and discourages investment and consumption.
The expected impact is lower demand for products and services, cooling inflation. The side effect is that a slow economy tends to reduce job creation.
Strength of consumption
IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy recognizes that with the highest Selic in almost 20 years, one has to wonder how unemployment reached the Pnad’s historic low.
In the interview to present the data to journalists, the researcher explains that “the transmission of the interest rate effect is not uniform”.
It divides the direction of household spending into sectors that are sensitive and those that are not sensitive to high interest rates.
“There was no explosion in the consumption of durable goods, in the purchase of furniture. The activities that are most dependent on credit or interest were not those that expanded the most in 2025”, he mentions.
On the other hand, she considers, throughout 2025 the country experienced an increase in the employed population, worker income and minimum wage, which led to a “beneficial feedback” effect.
“We have a large number of people who are employed and, at the same time, have increasing incomes”, he explains.
Record yield
Pnad also revealed that, in 2025, the worker’s average monthly income reached a record of R$3,560, an increase of 5.7% (or R$192) compared to 2024, already discounting inflation for the period..
“Where was this consumption channeled? It was for non-durable goods, such as food, clothing, food services, some personal services”, maintains the researcher.
“This consumption took place not necessarily through access to credit, but through growth in worker income.”
Beringuy also highlighted two factors directly linked to worker income: inflationary control, which “certainly benefits family consumption”, and the real appreciation (above inflation) of the minimum wage.
“It ends up benefiting workers in the most elementary, less educated segments.”
Activities
The IBGE survey shows how the total of 103 million people employed in 2025 is divided by group of activities. The one that offers the most job vacancies is commerce.
- Trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles: 19.5 million
- Public administration, defense, social security, education, human health and social services: 19 million
- Information, communication and financial, real estate, professional and administrative activities: 13.4 million
- General industry: 13.3 million
- Agriculture, livestock, forestry production, fishing and aquaculture: 7.9 million
- Construction: 7.4 million
- Domestic services: 5.7 million
- Transport, storage and mail: 5.9 million
- Other services: 5.6 million
- Accommodation and food: 5.4 million
Own account
A highlight of the survey released today is the number of self-employed workers, which reaches 26.1 million, 73% of which are informal (without CNPJ). From one year to the next, total own account increased by 2.4%.
The IBGE coordinator points out that the increase in these workers does not represent a reduction in workers with a formal contract.
“There is the growth of [trabalhador por] own account and also accompanied by a formal bond.”
Pnad shows that the number of formal employees reached 38.9 million people in 2025, the highest in the series.
“Maybe there will be a replacement, but we don’t know the real intensity of this, of a migration from the unregistered to the self-employed”, he suggests.
The number of employees without a formal contract fell by 0.8% in 2025, reaching 13.8 million people.
