Brazil's unemployment rate fell to 5.3% in the three months through August, the lowest reading for that period since the series began in 2012, the IBGE, the national statistics agency, reported on Tuesday (September 29). For people looking for work, the number means less competition for each opening: 281,000 fewer people were searching without success than in the quarter ended in May. The country now has 5.8 million unemployed people, nearly the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The rate dropped from 5.6% in the quarter through May and sits 0.3 percentage point below the same period of 2025. It matched expectations: the median market forecast was also 5.3%, according to Folha de S.Paulo, citing Bloomberg, and InfoMoney, citing Reuters.
Record employment, driven by informal work
The number of people with some job reached a record 103.5 million, up 774,000 in three months and 1.1 million in a year. But about 7 in 10 of those new positions were informal: 528,000 of the 774,000 people who entered the workforce had no signed work contract and no registered business, Folha reports. The informality rate rose from 37.3% to 37.5% of all workers, some 38.8 million people.
In plain terms: the rate comes from the Pnad Continua, the IBGE's employment survey, measured in a "rolling quarter" that covers the three most recent months, and the institute avoids comparing periods that share months. A person counts as unemployed only if they are 14 or older, have no job and are actively looking for one. People who give up the search leave the unemployment rate and are counted as discouraged.
Formal hiring barely moved: private sector employees with a signed work card, Brazil's standard formal contract, totaled a record 39.5 million but were considered stable by the IBGE. Working without the card means giving up the equivalent of a year-end extra salary, paid vacation, the severance fund known as FGTS and unemployment insurance. Even so, informality remains below the 38% recorded a year ago.
Average income from all jobs stood at R$ 3,777 a month, stable in the quarter and 3.7% higher than a year earlier, a figure already adjusted for inflation. The total wage bill, which adds up what all employed people earn, hit a record R$ 385.6 billion a month. The number of discouraged workers fell to 2.4 million, down 11.9% in a year, and the underutilization rate, which includes people working fewer hours than they would like, was 13.1%.