BRASILIA: Brazil's unemployment rate fell to 14.1% in the three months through November, official figures showed on Thursday, led by record growth in the number of people in work and a wave of seasonal hiring.
The unemployment rate was down from 14.3% in the three months to October, statistics agency IBGE said, slipping further back from the record 14.6% in the three months to September.
The median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists was for an unemployment rate of 14.0%. It ended 2019 at 11.0%.
Formal job growth surged to record levels late last year as Latin America's largest economy recovered from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thursday's data reflected this phenomenon.
The IBGE figures showed 85.6 million Brazilians had work, up 4.8% or 3.9 million people from the June-August period. But that was still down 9.4%, or 8.8 million people, from the same period a year earlier.
"Growth of the employed population is the largest in the series history," said IBGE analyst Adriana Beringuy. "This is linked to the return of people who had left the labor market because of social distancing, and the increase in hiring at this time of year."
The workforce of 99.6 million people was up more than 4 million from the three months through August, and the number of people who were out of the workforce entirely fell by 2.7 million to 76.4 million, IBGE said.
Compared with a year ago, however, the workforce is still down 11.3 million people, or 17.3% smaller, IBGE noted.
If the labor market cannot continue to absorb the millions of people returning to look for work, the unemployment rate could push back up again.
Solange Srour, chief Brazil economist at Credit Suisse, estimates that the average rate will rise to 15.0% this year from 13.2% last year as those re-entering the labor force exceed the number of job openings.
The number of Brazilians officially unemployed in the three months to November stood at 14 million, IBGE said, little changed from June-August but 18% higher than a year ago.
The underemployment rate fell to 29% from 30.6% in the June-August period, and the number of underemployed fell by just over a million to 32.2 million, IBGE said. Both measures are still significantly higher than the same period a year earlier.