Unemployment in Brazil Drops to 11.8 Percent in the Quarter Ended in July

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The unemployment rate in Brazil stood at 11.8 percent in the quarter that ended in July, according to data from the National Continuous Household Sample Survey (Continuous PNAD) released Friday morning, August 30th, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

The result was below the median (11.9 percent) of the analysts’ forecasts heard by the Broadcast Projections, who predicted an unemployment rate between 11.7 and 12.1 percent.

For the same period in 2018, the unemployment rate measured by the Continuous PNAD was 12.3 percent. In the quarter up to June this year, the rate was twelve percent. The worker’s average real income was R$2,286.00 in the quarter that ended in July. The result represents a 0.1 percent drop in relation to the same period a year earlier.

Real gross income paid to the employed totaled R$208.6 billion in the quarter up to July, an increase of 2.2 percent over the same period in the previous year.