In November, the employed population increased by 0.4%, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.4 percentage points and the labour underutilisation decreased by 0.9 percentage points

Summary

November 2020 - definitive estimates:
• The employed population has increased by 0.4% from the previous month and by 1.8% from three months before, but it has decreased by 1.1% from the same month of 2019 .
• The unemployed population has decreased by 4.7% from October 2020 and by 10.9% from August of the same year, having increased by 6.3% from November 2019.
• The unemployment rate (concept of the International Labour Organization, ILO) stood at 7.1%, 0.4 percentage points (pp) less than in the previous month and 1.0 pp less than in three months before and 0.4 pp more than in the same month of the previous year.
• The labour underutilisation rate was estimated at 14.0%, down 0.9 pp from the previous month, down 1.5 pp from three months before and up 1.5 pp from a year earlier.
• The monthly decrease of the labour underutilisation rate in this month was due the decrease of all of its indicators; specially the unemployed population (4.7%) and the number of underemployed part-time workers (8.6%).

December 2020 - provisional estimates:
• The employed population has decreased by 0.2% from the previous month and by 1.1% from the same month of 2019, having increased by 0.9% from three months before.
• The unemployed population has decreased by 10.2% from November 2020, by 18.7% from September of the same year and by 4.8% from December 2019.
• The unemployment rate (ILO concept) stood at 6.5%, down 0.6 pp from the previous month, down 1.4 pp from three months before and down 0.2 pp from the same month of 2019.
• The labour underutilisation rate was estimated at 13.4%, 0.6 pp less than in the previous month, 2.0 pp less than September 2020 and 0.8 pp more than a year earlier.
• The monthly decrease of the labour underutilisation rate in this month was mainly due to the decrease the unemployed population (10.2%).

In January 2021, Statistics Portugal has started a new Labour Force Survey data series. For more information, see page 12.