UPDATE 1-Brazil unemployment rate 14.6% in quarter through May, stuck near record high

(Adds detail on May data)

By Jamie McGeever

BRASILIA, July 30 (Reuters) - Brazil's unemployment rate dipped slightly to 14.6% in the three months to May, figures showed on Friday, but that was higher than economists had expected and the second highest since comparable records began almost a decade ago.

The official unemployment rate edged down from 14.7% in April and March, statistics agency IBGE said, the highest level since its series began in 2012.

The median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists was for a 14.5% jobless rate.

Some 14.8 million people were out of work in the three months to May, the second highest since 2012 and up 16.4% or 2.1 million from the same three-month period last year as more people returned to the labor market to find employment.

As has been the case for almost a year now, less than 50% of the working population had a job in the period, the figures showed.

Some 86.7 million Brazilians had work in May, IBGE said, up 0.9% or 809,000 from the three months to February and similar to the same period a year ago.

The under-employment rate of 29.3% was little changed from the Nov.-Feb. Period, and up almost two percentage points from a year earlier, IBGE said.

That meant 32.9 million people were under-utilized in May, up marginally from the prior three-month period and 2.6 million more than a year ago. (Reporting by Jamie McGeever, editing by Louise Heavens)