Unemployment drops to 6.2% in March. INE expects stabilization in April
The unemployment rate retreated to 6.2% in March. But despite the pandemic, the INE predicts stabilization in April, with a marginal rise to 6.3%. Counting the layoff, it would be 13.3%.
The unemployment rate fell in March and is expected to stabilize in April, despite the impact of the new coronavirus pandemic. The new data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) show a drop of 0.2 percentage points in unemployment in March compared to February, with the rate set at 6.2%.
This rate does not yet reflect the full impact of the coronavirus in Portugal, as restrictions on economic activity were imposed only in mid-March. However, INE already gives a provisional estimate for the unemployment rate in April, anticipating a marginal increase that reflects a possible stabilization of the labour market in the country.
“In April 2020, the provisional estimate of the unemployment rate stood at 6.3%, having increased by 0.1 pp from the previous month,” reports the Portuguese statistics agency. These figures, however, do not include the thousands of workers in simplified lay-offs, a measure implemented by the government to protect jobs.
That is why, according to INE, the provisional estimate of the labour underutilisation rate in April “was 13.3%, up 0.9 pp from the month before.” This indicator includes not only the unemployed population but also “the underemployment of part-time workers, the inactive seeking work but not immediately available, and the inactive available but not seeking work.”
