RIO DE JANEIRO, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Michel Temer on Tuesday highlighted his government's efforts to create jobs following an increase in unemployment due to the country's economic crisis.
"We are feeling the effects. We are recouping the losses by creating new jobs. We already have more than 380,000 formal signed contracts," Temer said following the inauguration of the new Minister of Labor, Caio Luiz de Almeida Vieira de Mello.
Last July, the Temer government approved sweeping labor reforms aimed at "modernizing" labor laws, which sparked widespread controversy across the country.
Temer defended the labor reforms, saying that modernizing the country's labor laws brought Brazil into the 21st century by reducing labor litigation and stimulating hiring.
The economic crisis that hit Brazil in 2015 and 2016 has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and caused a spike in unemployment, which hit a record high of 14.2 million people, equivalent to 13.7 percent of the active workforce in April 2017, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.
