June’s unemployment rate was 9.1%

June’s unemployment rate stood at 9.1%. The final value was disclosed this Wednesday by Statistics Portugal (INE) and it stands slightly above the institute’s flash estimate, which pointed to a 9% unemployment rate in that month. As for July, INE states, the rate should remain unchanged.

The final data from INE show that, in the end of June, the number of unemployed was at 468.9 thousand, 1.1% less than in the previous month. As for the employed population, it only had a 0.2% increase, to 4,680,600 people. The unemployment  rate for that month was, therefore, 9.1%, a 0.1 points’ decrease in comparison to May; it is also the lowest percentage since November 2008, when the unemployment rate was 8.9%.

In July, INE’s flash estimates pointed to the same unemployment rate (9.1%), while the unemployed population should increase to 470 thousand people. Simultaneously, the employed population should increase to 4,692,400 people.

Among the youth, the decrease in unemployment was slightly more expressive: it went from 22.7% in May to 22.2% in June. In spite of this dive, the number of unemployed young people increased to 81.6 thousand in that month (in May, that number was 80.8 thousand). Nonetheless, the increase in the number of youth employed population was enough to make up it: in June, 285.3 thousand young people were employed, against the 275.4 thousand in May. In July, unemployment rate among the youth should increase again, to 22.6%.