Unemployment drops to 6.5% in 2019 and government target fails
The unemployment rate in Portugal fell to 6.5% in 2019 as a whole. This is an improvement on the 7% rate of 2018. Even so, the government failed to meet the 6.4% target.
The unemployment rate in Portugal fell to 6.5% in 2019. This is a decrease of 0.5 percentage points from the 7% rate of the previous year. Despite the improvement, the Government failed to meet its target of reducing unemployment to 6.4% last year.
According to data released Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics, unemployment fell in 2019 for the sixth year in a row, following the improvement in the country’s economic conditions after the debt crisis in 2011 and the troika’s adjustment programme that followed in the following years.
“In 2019, the unemployed population was estimated at 339.5 thousand people, having decreased by 7.2% (+ 26.4 thousand) in relation to the previous year. This was the smallest decrease observed since 2014 when the unemployed population declined,” notes the statistics office.
On the other hand, the employed population increased by 1.0% (+46,400), reaching 4,913,100 people for the year as a whole.
According to INE, the youth unemployment rate (15 to 24 years) was 18.3%, down 2.0 percentage points on the previous year.
The proportion of long-term unemployed fell 1.2 points to 49.9%.
