THE UNEMPLOYMENT rate in Portugal for the second half of the year has hit 520,000, or 7.9 per cent, of the working population.
According to the Portuguese National Statistics Institute, Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), there are 40,000 more unemployed than for the same period in 2006.
According to the latest statistics released last week, 5.1 million Portuguese are employed, of which around 2.7 million are men and 2.3 million are women.
There are 589,000 working in agriculture, in livestock farms or silviculture (forestry), with 288,000 working in fishing and associated industries.
Some 32,000 are considered to be long term unemployed, not actively seeking work, while 3.3 million Portuguese are not working at all because they are children, students, housewives (or househusbands) and pensioners.
The number of Portuguese working for themselves either on ‘green receipts’ or as a micro company stands at around 1.1 million while 62.4 per cent of the population was registered as being over the age of 15 and 64.8 per cent of all men over 15 were in work.
In the past year, 11,600 employees have left public administration, mostly from Defence and Social Security while 31,000 recently unemployed are actively looking for work according to job centre data.
According to the INE, young people aged between 24 and 34 are most affected by unemployment. In the months of April, May and June, 17,200 ended up on the dole, representing an average of 191 unemployed per day.
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