According to data released by the National Statistics Institute (INE), ECO cites that the unemployment rate stood at 6.5% in March, which corresponds to a very slight decline both compared to the previous month and compared to the previous month a year ago. The employed population reached historic highs.

“The unemployment rate stood at 6.5%, 0.1 percentage points lower than the previous month, the same as three months before, and 0.3 percentage points lower than the same month in 2023 ”, notes the statistics office this morning, which also reveals that, in total, there were 346.5 thousand unemployed people in Portugal in March.

The employment rate stood at 64.3 %, above the 64.2% recorded in the previous month and the 64% recorded a year ago. In total, in the third month of the year, there were five million people employed here.

According to INE, in March Portugal achieved the highest active population figure since 1998.

Based on this evolution of the employed and unemployed population, INE points out that the active population increased both year-on-year (1.6%) and chain-wise (0.1%) to almost 5.4 million people.

In contrast, the inactive population fell 0.1% quarter-on-quarter and 1.3% year-on-year to 2.4 million individuals. “The evolution of the inactive population was the result of the decrease in the number of other inactive people, those who are neither looking for a job nor available to work (four thousand; 0.2%), which surpassed the increase observed in the number of inactive people available to work, but who are not looking for a job (2.2 thousand; 2.1%)”, details INE.

The labor underutilisation rate stood at 11.4% in March, that is, it stabilised compared to February and fell 0.6 percentage points compared to March of last year.