Sharjah24 – AFP: Brazil's unemployment rate fell to 10.5 percent for the three months from February to April, the lowest for the period since 2015, the government said Tuesday.
The figure, a drop of 0.7 percentage points from the three months to January, came in lower than expected -- welcome news for Latin America's biggest economy, which has been struggling with weak growth and high inflation.
Analysts polled by business daily Valor had forecast the rate would be 10.9 percent for the sliding three-month period.
Despite the improvement, there are still 11.3 million jobless workers in the country of 213 million people.
And 40 percent of those who have jobs are employed in the low-paying informal sector.
Brazilians have been hurting from sharp price increases. The annual rate currently stands at 12.13 percent, far above the central bank's target of 3.5 percent.
The economy has turned into a liability for far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is up for reelection in October.
Some 54 percent of Brazilians say the country's economic situation will have a big impact on their vote, according to a recent poll from the Datafolha institute.
The same poll found Bolsonaro trailing leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with 27 percent of the vote to 48 percent for the long-standing front-runner.
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