RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's unemployment rate rose for the first time in a year from November to January as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tries to kick-start Latin America's biggest economy.
The jobless rate was 8.4 percent for the three-month sliding period, up from 7.9 percent for the period from October to December, said the national statistics institute, IBGE.
The rate came in slightly higher than the 8.2 percent analysts had forecast in a poll of 28 experts by business daily Valor.
It is the first time Brazil's unemployment rate has increased since November-January 2022, when it rose from 11.1 percent to 11.2 percent.
However, it was the lowest rate since 2015 for the November-January period, when unemployment has historically ticked up.
Veteran leftist Lula, who took office on January 1, is keen to rekindle growth in a flagging economy that contracted by 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The country of 215 million people currently has nine million workers looking for jobs. Another 38.5 million work in the low-paying informal sector, or 39 percent of the employed population, according to IBGE.