page_title: 2014 Brazilian economic crisis
section_title: Unemployment
hierarchical_section_title: 2014 Brazilian economic crisis / Consequences / Unemployment
caption_attribution_description: Português: Evolução do desemprego 2012-2017
context_page_description: From mid-2014 onward, Brazil experienced a severe economic crisis. The country's Gross Domestic Product fell by 3.5% in 2015 and 3.3% in 2016, after which a small economic recovery began. That recovery continued until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact Brazil.
  The economic crisis occurred alongside a political crisis that resulted in the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff. Together these events caused mass popular dissatisfaction with the political system. In the first quarter of 2017, Brazil's GDP rose by 1%. This was the first GDP increase to occur in eight consecutive quarters. Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles announced that Brazil had "emerged from the greatest crisis of the century". However, the rise in GDP marked only the end of a technical recession, not the end of the crisis.
  During the economic crisis, high unemployment rates were reported throughout the country, and there was widespread uncertainty regarding Brazil's economic future following a series of political scandals. The recession was the second most severe in the country's history, and was followed by the slowest recovery.
context_section_description: Before the recession, Brazil's unemployment rate hovered around 6.8% for most of 2014, but began increasing in February 2015, resulting in a 2015 average of 8.5%. The economy lost more than 1.5 million jobs throughout 2015, fueling public discontent against the political establishment and the political leadership of the Worker's Party and President Dilma Rousseff. The unemployment rate continued to rise throughout 2016 to finish the year at 12.0%, with 12.3 million people unemployed and an estimated 2.8 million private-sector jobs cut over the preceding two years.
  Young people were affected most by the worsening job market. While the overall unemployment rate was 12.7% in the first quarter of 2019, the rate in people from 14 to 17 years was 44.5% and 27.3% for people from 18 to 24 years.
  Experts expressed concern for the unintended economic and social repercussions for Brazil's younger population, as the economic crisis decreased social security contributions and depreciated human capital (caused by the decrease in the technical capacity of future workers).
caption: The unemployment rate from 2012 to 2017. Each vertical line corresponds to a month.[19]
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