RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's unemployment rate dropped to 11.8 percent in the three months between May and July, a report from the state-run Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said on Friday.
The rate, which means there were about 12.6 million jobless people in Brazil, fell compared with the number in the previous quarter (February-April), when it was 12.5 percent. The rate in the same period of 2018 was 12.3 percent.
The number of unemployed Brazilians was reduced by 4.6 percent, or 609,000 people, in the quarter ending in July, compared with the previous three months, according to the report.
IBGE's report said that the recovery of the labor market was mainly due to an increase of informal labor and underemployment.
The number of workers without a formal contract in the private sector rose by 5.6 percent against the same quarter in 2018 and hit a new record of 11.7 million people.
Similarly, the number of self-employed workers grew by 5.2 percent, or 1.2 million people, on a year-on-year comparison and reached a new record of 24.2 million people.
The decline in unemployment also coincided with the creation of formal jobs.
In July, 43,280 new jobs were created, and the number of new jobs accumulated in the year until that month was 461,411, a 2.93 percent increase compared to the same period in 2018, according to a report by the Ministry of Economy revealed last week.
