The unemployment rate for the 2nd quarter of 2015 was 11.9%. This value is down 1.8 percentage points (p.p.) from the previous quarter and 2.0 p.p. from the same quarter of 2014.
The unemployed population was estimated at 620.4 thousand people, corresponding to a quarterly decrease of 13.0% and to a year-on-year decrease of 14.9% (less 92.5 thousand and less 108.5 thousand people, respectively).
The employed population was estimated at 4 580.8 thousand people, which corresponds to a quarterly increase of 2.3% (more 103.7 thousand people) and to a year-on-year increase of 1.5% (more 66.2 thousand people).
The participation rate of the working age population stood at 58.6%, up 0.1 p.p. from the previous quarter and down 0.4 p.p. from the same quarter of 2014.
In this quarter, Statistics Portugal starts releasing estimates of quarterly flows between labour force states (gross and net flows) in number of persons, as a complement to the transition rates usually released, as explained in pages 6 to 8 of this Press Release. Eurostat expects to start releasing, possibly even in 2015, these results by country, which are obtained by means of a methodology that is close to the one developed by Statistics Portugal.
In these estimates, it was considered the population aged 15 and over and the values were not seasonally adjusted.