RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's unemployment rate stood at 12.2 percent at the end of January, representing 12.7 million people out of work, the country's statistics office IBGE announced Wednesday.

According to its data, this was up from 11.8 percent at the end of December, although lower than the 12.6 percent seen in January of 2017.

Over the last year, the total number of employed people rose by 1.8 million, although 986,000 of these work for themselves.

At the same time, the number of informal laborers grew by 500,000 year-on-year.

"We have to specify that this growth (of employed people) happened because of informal labor," IBGE pointed out, adding that in January, only 317,000 formal jobs were created, mostly in public service.

According to IBGE, the average salary for Brazilian workers stood at 2,169 reais (668 U.S. dollars) in January, the same as in December.