Unemployment rate falls to 5.9% in July

  • Lusa
  • 31 August 2022

According to INE, in July, "the unemployment rate stood at 5.9%, down 0.1 percentage points from the previous month and 0.7 percentage points from July 2021."

Portugal’s unemployment rate was 5.9% in July, 0.1 percentage points lower than in June and lower than the 6.6% in July 2021, according to provisional data released on Wednesday by Statistics Portugal (INE).

According to INE’s ‘Monthly Employment and Unemployment Estimates’, in July, “the unemployment rate stood at 5.9%, down 0.1 percentage points from the previous month and 0.7 percentage points from July 2021, and unchanged from three months earlier.”

These statistics also revised the June unemployment rate from a provisional 6.1% to 6.0%, “the same as the previous month, 0.2 percentage points higher than three months earlier and 0.8 percentage points lower than a year earlier”.

In February 2022, the unemployment rate reached a 10-year low of 5.7%.

In July 2022, INE estimates that the active population (5,182.500) decreased by 0.1% (7,000 people) compared to June, having increased by 0.1% compared to the July 2021 estimate.

According to INE, the fall in the active population “resulted from the reduction of the employed population by 3,600 (0.1%) and the unemployed population by 3,500 (1.1%).”

The increase in the inactive population (6,700; 0.1%) compared with June 2021 “was accompanied by an increase in the employed population (41,400; 0.9%), which more than compensated for the reduction in the unemployed population (34,800; 10.2%).”

As highlighted by INE, “despite the decrease observed in July 2022, the active population remains close to the maximum of the last 10 years, registered in June 2022 (5,189,500 people).”

The employed population (4,876,200) decreased 0.1% in July compared to the previous month. It increased 0.9% compared to the same month in 2021, while the unemployed population (306,200) increased compared to the previous month (1.1%) and decreased compared to July 2021 (10.2%).

The inactive population (2,478,000) recorded a 0.3% increase in July compared with the previous month and a decrease of 1.0% compared with a year earlier.

In June this year, the inactive population recorded its lowest value since February 1998 (2,470,500 people).

The employment rate in July was 63.7%, remaining close to the value of March of this year when it reached the highest value of the last decade (63.8%).

The INE data also indicated that the labour underutilisation rate stood at 11.5%, down 0.1 percentage points from the previous month and 0.9 percentage points below the same month of 2021.