The unemployment rate in the quarter ending in August was 5.3%, the lowest ever recorded for the period since 2012, when the historical series from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) began. Furthermore, the institute recorded a record number of employed workers, formal employment contracts, total wages and social security contributions.
The performance of unemployment in the three-month period up to August represents a decline in relation to the moving quarter up to May (5.6%) and in comparison to the same period in 2025 (5.6%). According to the Economic Policy Secretariat (SPE) of the Ministry of Finance, the result was in line with the expectations of market analysts.
The data is part of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), released this Tuesday (29).
The survey shows that in the quarter up to August the employed population reached 103.5 million people, the highest ever recorded. This contingent represents an increase of 0.8% in relation to the quarter up to May, that is, 774 thousand more workers.
The research also reveals that the activity groups that drove the increase in employment were general industry (growth of 2%, or 265 thousand more people) and construction (4.1%, or 306 thousand more people).
Maximum signed portfolio
The number of private sector employees with a formal contract reached 39.5 million, also a record.
The unemployed population ended the period at 5.8 million people, a decrease of 4.6% (281 thousand less) compared to the quarter from March to May.
The discouraged population, made up of those people who are not even looking for work because they believe they will not find it, totaled 2.4 million by August - a stable level in relation to the previous quarter and 11.9% lower (317 thousand less) in relation to the same period in 2025.
The informality rate - proportion of informal workers in the employed population - was 37.5%, which represents 38.8 million people. In the previous quarter it was 37.3%.
The IBGE identifies workers without a formal contract and self-employed people and employers without a CNPJ as informal. These people do not have guaranteed coverage such as unemployment insurance, vacations and 13th salary.
Record wage bill
The worker's average monthly income was R$3,777. In the quarter up to May it was R$3,752. The highest ever recorded was R$3,783, in the quarter ending in February 2026.
The wage bill, the sum of all workers' salaries, money that ends up being used for consumption, debt payment, investments and savings, reached R$385.6 billion, the highest in the series, with growth of 1.4% in the quarter (plus R$5.2 billion) and 4.8% (plus R$17.5 billion) in one year.
Record number of Social Security contributors
According to Pnad, Brazil reached the highest number of workers contributing to social security institutes ever recorded, 68.5 million people. This represents that out of every 100 workers, 66.2 contribute.
By contributing to Social Security institutes, the worker acquires guarantees such as retirement, disability benefits and death pensions.
The IBGE considers employees, employers, domestic and self-employed workers who have contributed to official federal (INSS or Union Social Security Plan), state or municipal pension institutes to be contributors.
Portrait of the job market
The IBGE survey investigates behavior in the labor market for people aged 14 or over and takes into account all forms of occupation, whether with or without a formal contract, temporary and self-employed, for example.
According to the institute's criteria, only a person who actually looked for a vacancy 30 days before the search is considered unemployed. 211 thousand homes are visited in all states and the Federal District.
