Brasilia, (IANS) : Brazil lost 40,864 formal jobs in January, the 22nd consecutive month in which the country saw more firings than hirings, the country’s Labour Ministry said.

The last time the country registered a positive balance of job generation was March 2015, when the economy registered the net generation of 19,000 jobs, the ministry said on Friday.

Despite the negative figures, the January results remain better than the numbers registered in January 2016, when 99,694 jobs were lost, Xinhua news agency reported.

In 2016, the country lost a total of 1.3 million jobs, but Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles has said recently that the country’s economy has started to resume its growth in the beginning of the year.

Brazil has been slogging through two years of recession and the government has pushed forward a series of reforms regarding labour, social security and secondary education.

However, the opposition said the reforms will only deepen the crisis in Brazil’s economy.