The May 2018 unemployment rate was 7.0%, down 0.1 percentage points (p.p.) from the previous month’s level, 0.6 p.p. from three months before and 2.2 p.p. from the same month of 2017. That value corresponds to a downwards revision of 0.3 p.p. from the provisional estimate released one month ago and only going back to October 2002 it is possible to find a lower unemployment rate.
Statistics Portugal estimates that the May unemployed population was 362.8 thousand people, having decreased by 1.4% from the previous month’s level (5.1 thousand fewer people). The employed population estimate was 4,791.8 thousand people, having increased by 1.7 thousand (which corresponds to a nearly null relative change) from the previous month’s level.
The provisional unemployment rate estimate for June 2018 was 6.7%. For this month, the provisional estimate for the unemployed population was 347.1 thousand people and that for the employed population was 4,805.0 thousand people.