After three months of decline, unemployment rises to 13.2 … – publico

                 

                         
                     

                 

 
                         

After three consecutive months of decline, unemployment rose again in May, now affecting 13.2% of the workforce. The data released Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE) are provisional and the final amount will only be known in the next publication, so only a few weeks if you can confirm that there really is an interruption of the downward trend that prevailed since February.

                     

                         The unemployment rate was 0.4 percentage points above the final value determined for April (12.8%), offsetting the decrease in the previous two months.

The INE points to the existence of 676.8 thousand unemployed, representing an increase of 2.9% from April. In practice, there are 19,000 people who say they are out of work.

Following the trend, youth unemployment also increased. In May 33.3% of the assets between 15 and 24 were unemployed, while April was 31.7%.

Compared to the same period last year, the figures show that unemployment It continues to shrink, falling from 14.4% in May 2014 to 13.2% in May 2015. Still, the pace of decline was slower than in the first months of the year. The same applies to young people, whose unemployment rate rose from 36.5% to 33.3%.

Contrary to what happens in the released data every three months, monthly estimates of the INE consider the population between 15 and 74 years and the figures are seasonally adjusted. The unemployment rate without considering the seasonal effects of some business sectors (tourism, agriculture, for instance) also increased to 13% in May. This is an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to April but down 1.1 percentage points compared to May 2014.

The figures for May, says the institute are provisional, “since it is a mobile quarter in which for the first two months the collection of the Labour Force Survey information has been completed (April and May 2015) and for the third month a projection was based on models time series “. Definitive figures will not be known next highlight.

This is what happened with the data for the month of April. In the first estimate, the INE pointed to an unemployment rate of 13%, but the information now disclosed the number has been revised and after all was in 12.8%.

In May, the INE also gives account a decline in the working population. The number of people employed fell by 0.5% compared with the previous month to 4.4 million, while year on year there is an increase.

The monthly decrease of the employed population was found mainly among men (-1.2%) and young people (-1%), but also in adults (-0.5%). Women were the exception, having registered a slight increase of female employment (around 0.2%), which resulted in over five thousand people employed than in the previous month.

The INE He started releasing monthly data on the labor market in November last year. At the time, the institute explained the methodology and warned that the data would be subject to revisions. But earlier this year the president of the institute, Alda Carvalho was called on Parliament by the majority of MPs to explain the reasons for these revisions.