Unemployment in Portugal saw a 45.1% increase between July and September – habitually the months of highest employment due to the tourist season.
This is the first time since 2011 – when the country was under the bailout demands of the troika – that unemployment has registered such a sharp rise.
Said a press release by statistics institute INE: “The unemployed population, estimated at 404,100 people, increased 45.1% (ie by 125,700 people) in relation to the previous three month period”.
The total translates into a 24.9% increase in unemployment with regard to the same three month period in 2019.
Nationally, the new figures take Portugal’s rate of unemployment up 2.2 points to 7.8%.
As the figures came through, so too did news that Italian company Generali Seguros, which only relatively recently bought in to Portuguese operations Tranquilidade and Açoreana, advancing with ‘collective dismissals’.
