RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's unemployment rate was 12.8 percent in the quarter ending in July, down 0.8 percent from the previous quarter, the official statistics agency IBGE announced Thursday.
The slight decrease was attributed to more people working in the informal market without a formal job contract.
In other words, the unemployment rate did not fall because more Brazilians were formally hired by companies, but because many are underemployed.
Although Brazil's job market is "showing quantitative improvement, the quality of this improvement is questionable, since it does not take place in the formal market," said IBGE representative Cimar Azevedo.
According to the Brazilian agency, most of the 721,000 people who found jobs between April and July are underemployed or self-employed, as the number of citizens holding formal jobs remained stable at 33.3 million.
In times of crisis as Brazil is going through one now, Brazilians often resort to informal jobs to make ends meet.
