Brazil’s unemployment rate has hit a record 14.6 percent as the pandemic slammed Latin America’s largest economy, the government reported Friday.
The figure for the July-September period was the third straight record for joblessness in Brazil.
A total of 14.1 million workers were seeking jobs, said Brazilian statistics institute IBGE.
Another 5.9 million have given up looking for work another record, and a worrying sign for the economy.
The unemployment rate was up from 11.8 percent during the same quarter last year and 14.4 percent for the June-August period in 2020.
The government reports unemployment numbers for rolling three-month periods.
The latest rate was the highest since that system was introduced in 2012.
Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country, with 212 million people, entered a recession in the second quarter of the year with a record economic contraction of 9.7 per cent.
It has been hit hard by the pandemic, which has killed more than 170,000 people in Brazil, the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States.