BRASILIA: Brazil’s economy created more than a quarter of a million formal jobs in January, official figures showed on Tuesday, the strongest growth for that month since comparable records began in 1992.

The robust figures come after data on Monday showed activity in Latin America’s largest economy was also much stronger in January than economists had expected, indicating a solid start to the year.

“The figures show that the country continued its economic recovery after the peak of COVID cases in 2020, which shut down part of the country’s economic activities,” the Economy Ministry said in a statement.

The data, however, is for January, a period before the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic became far more deadly. Since then, tens of thousands of Brazilians have died and several states have gone back into near total lockdown.

A net 260,353 formal jobs were created in January, the Economy Ministry said, more than double the 122,000 increase forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, led by industry and services.

A net 90,431 jobs were created in industry, almost all in manufacturing, while a net 83,686 jobs were created in the services sector, the ministry said. Construction saw 43,498 jobs created in the month. The figures on Tuesday showed that 1.53 million jobs were created in January overall and 1.27 million were cut.