Brazil Ended 2023 With the Lowest Unemployment Rate in 9 Years

On Wednesday, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released a report showing that Brazil concluded 2023 with an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent with respect to the economically active population.

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In Q4 2023, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.3 percentage points compared to Q3 (7.7 percent) and by 0.5 percentage points compared to Q4 2022 (7.9 percent). This marks the lowest rate for the fourth quarter since 2014 when the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent.

As for the annual average unemployment rate, the index stood at 7.8 percent in 2023, down from 9.6 percent measured in 2022 and 14,0 percent in 2021.

The results reflect the trend of declining unemployment in Brazil since the record registered in Q3 2020 (14.9 percent), when unemployment surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

After concluding 2020 with an unemployment rate of 14.2 percent, the rate dropped to 11.1 percent in Q4 2021, 7.9 percent in Q4 2022, and 7.4 percent in Q4 2023.

The reduction in unemployment was due to the fact that the number of employed persons reached a record of 101 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, with a growth of 1.6 percent compared to December 2022. This means that, during his first year in office, President Lula da Silva generated 1.6 million new jobs.

Between December 2022 and December 2023, the unemployed population decreased by 5.7 percent to 8.1 million, which indicates that about 490,000 people who were unemployed joined the workforce in the last year.

During the same period, however, the informal labor rate increased from 38.8 percent to 39.1 percent, meaning that 39.5 million Brazilians are informal workers.

The improvement in the Brazilian labor market reflected the macroeconomic improvement experienced in 2023 when the gross domestic product growth rate was 2.92 percent.