Sao Paulo - Unemployment in Brazil dropped to 14.1 per cent in September, its lowest level for that month since 1998, the trade- union research institute Dieese said Wednesday in Sao Paulo.

According to Dieese, unemployment in September in the six metropolitan regions that were studied - Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador de Bahia and Brasilia - fell by 0.4 percentage points in relation to August.

That drop corresponds to 72,000 people who found jobs in the period in those cities, with a total of 2.84 million unemployed workers.

The number of workers with jobs was nearly 17.35 million people, an increase of 5.6 per cent in relation to September last year.

Dieese's statistics confirmed the trend reported by state Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in its latest report, noting that the international financial crisis had not yet hit the Brazilian labour market.

The country's financial markets, in turn, are suffering the slump, with a strong depreciation of the real and with a severe drop in stock prices that has forced the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange to suspend its activity on several occasions in recent weeks. (dpa)