By Jamie McGeever
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's unemployment rate fell to 11.8% in the three months through July, statistics agency IBGE said on Friday, below market expectations and the lowest this year in another sign that the economy may be slowly turning a corner for the better.
Brazil's unemployment rate has fallen almost a full percentage point since March, and the news comes a day after figures showed that the economy expanded twice as fast as economists had expected in the second quarter.
The unemployment rate in the three months to July fell from 12.0% in the three months to June, below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 11.9% and the lowest since December.
In the preceding three-month period from February to April, the jobless rate was 12.5%, IBGE said.
The number of Brazilians out of work fell by 609,000 in the period, or by 4.6%, to 12.6 million. That is still a high number, however, which reflects a large amount of slack in the labor market and is little changed from a year ago.
The underemployment rate, which hit a record 25.0% earlier this year, fell 0.4 percentage points to 24.6%, also little changed from a year earlier, IBGE said.
The number of underemployed workers in Brazil was little changed at 28.1 million, IBGE said. That hit a record 28.5 million earlier this year.