Unemployment falls to 8.4% in October, a minimum since February of 2005

  • ECO News
  • 8 January 2018

The unemployment rate has once again exceeded expectations and registered a new fall, to 8.4%. One would need to go back to February of 2005 to find the same percentage.

The unemployment rate has decreased once again in October of 2017, to 8.4%, the lowest percentage since February of 2005. This number represents a downward revision in comparison to the first projection, which pointed to a stabilization of this economic indicator. These data were disclosed this Monday by Statistics Portugal (INE). For the November unemployment rate, INE forecasts a new fall, to 8.2%.

INE estimates that the unemployed population is now 435 thousand people, 4.6 thousand less than what was registered in the previous month. As for the unemployed population, it should be 4,730.7 thousand people, 12.1 thousand more workers than what was registered in September.

The Institute’s projection for November points to an improvement in both ways: unemployed population should shrink again (424.2 thousand people), while the number of employed people should register a new increase (to 4,745.1 thousand).

In fact, INE highlights that the projection for November points to an increase of unemployed population in all groups under analysis: women and men, adults and the youth. Likewise, the employment rate improved 0.2 percentage points, and the anticipation is that it corresponded to 61% in November.

If the unemployment rate projected for November (8.2%) is confirmed, this will be the lowest amount since November of 2004, when the unemployment rate stood at 8.1%.