Despite the signs of an economic recovery in Brazil, data reveals that poverty is on the rise in Latin America's largest country. Much of this is down to a scarcity of jobs, and the high unemployment rate is affecting the nation's lower social classes the most. Paolo Cabral has this report from Sao Paolo.

Mayana da Silva and her mother Sandra live in one of the poorest corners of Sao Paulo's biggest slum, home to around one hundred thousand people. Neither woman has a job. They make a little money for the family by collecting aluminum cans for recycling. Counting a small social grant Mayana receives for her daughter, they make about sixty-five US dollars per month - to cover the needs of the seven family members who live in this one bedroom home.

MAYNARA DA SILVA RECYCLABLES SCAVENGER "Every day I go out to look for work, and people always say they are going to call me. Hope that will happen someday. In the meantime, all I can do is collect the aluminum cans or beg for money. It's enough to buy milk for the children and rice and beans for us. But sometimes we don't have money for the cooking gas and need to use firewood instead."

PAULO CABRAL SAO PAULO "Brazil is out of recession - but the job market remains weak with unemployment above 13 percent. And it's particularly hard for the poorest and less educated to find work."

According to a consultants' survey using official data, the number of Brazilians living in "extreme poverty" -- defined as making less than one-dollar-and-ninety cents per day -- increased last year.

Country-wide, the number of those in extreme poverty rose more than eleven percent. In Sao Paulo's metropolitan region - the country's economic capital - this number shot up 35 percent.

GILSON RODRIGUES, PRESIDENT PARAISOPOLIS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION "Paraisolis is very big and within it we also have different social classes. So people in the central areas of the slum, local entrepreneurs, are doing better. But those living in the poorest areas are being hit the hardest. There are many unskilled workers who lost their jobs. We notice the problem through the increased demand for assistance from the community association. People ask for food, for help with transportation, for cooking gas."

RAFAEL GEORGES CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR, OXFAM BRAZIL "What happened in 2017 is that in Brazil, the recovery of the economy didn't actually bring people out of the poverty situation. Because they actually tried to place themselves into the labor market through informal work. And the informal work does not provide the same level of income. So now we have the same level of poor we used to have in 2010, 2011 So we went back around seven years in terms of poverty."

Economic recovery and growth are essential to get people out of poverty. But as yet - Brazil's income inequality - among the highest in the world - has only widened. Paulo Cabral, CGTN, Sao Paulo.