UNEMPLOYMENT LOOKS set to rise in Portugal after being in decline since 2005.
Statistics covering the period from January to July 2008, published last week by the Portuguese National Statistics Institute (INE) and Employment and Professional Training Institute, Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional – IEFP, have revealed an increase in unemployment as a direct result of the economic slowdown.
IEFP figures indicate that, before July, there were 381,776 registered unemployed at unemployment centres, two per cent down on the same month in 2007.
But in July alone, there were 50,748 new cases registered at employment centres, representing a rise of 13 per cent on the same month in 2007.
The average monthly unemployment rate for the first six months of 2008 was less than they had been in the same period of 2007.
“The unemployment figures continue to show an overall fall from a high point of 6.2 per cent in January 2005 (47,000) to -10 per cent (35,000) in July 2008,” the IEFP states.
The number of unemployed looking for work in July 2008 stood at 91.5 per cent, 2.3 per cent less than for the same month of July 2007.
Taken as a whole, absolute unemployment values since the beginning of 2005 had steadily fallen but there were signs by the start of 2008 that this tendency was reversing.
The hardest hit by unemployment were those under the age of 25 and those seeking their first job after leaving education.
Francisco Madelino, the President of the IEFP, warned that the statistics showed some “instability” so it wasn’t “wise to jump to hasty conclusions”.
While unemployment was up, there were also more job vacancies available in July than the same period last year.
In his opinion, “it (was) necessary to wait for the results of another quarter to confirm the upward tendency in unemployment.”
The IEFP president did say that greater flexibility in the employment market could have a positive spin-off in terms of creating employment.
“But the fact that economic growth in Portugal was less than one per cent in 2008 still makes it difficult to substantially reduce unemployment,” he added.
According to the INE, Instituto Nacional de Estatística, economic growth was 1.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2007, 1.7 per cent in the second, 1.6 in the third, but only 0.9 per cent overall in the first half of 2008.
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