Unemployment dropped to 9.2%
Statistics Portugal (INE) announced the unemployment rate: it dropped to 9.2%, reaching a new low.
The unemployment rate for May stood at 9.2%, below the provisional percentage brought forward by Statistics Portugal (INE) almost one month ago.
“The May 2017 unemployment rate stood at 9.2%, down by 0.3 percentage points (p.p.) from the previous month’s level and by 0.7 p.p. from three months before. That value corresponds to a downward revision of 0.2 p.p. from the provisional estimate released one month ago and is the lowest observed estimate since November 2008 (8.9%)“, is stated in the Monthly Employment and Unemployment Estimates, disclosed this Friday morning.
As for the June forecast — data which is still subject to revision –, INE points to a 9% rate, the equivalent to 462.6 thousand people and, once again, 11.1 thousand people less than in May.
According to INE, from April to May, over 24.6 thousand net jobs have been created. This means that the unemployment rate is decreasing not because there is a smaller number of unemployed (there has been a 6.2% decrease in people looking for jobs, of around 30.5 thousand), but also because new job positions have been created.
The same situation happened in the same period of last year: when making an homologous comparison to May 2016, there were 150.7 thousand additional job positions in Portugal.
