The National Statistics Institute confirmed on Tuesday that the end of January unemployment rate was 7.9%, the lowest since July 2004.A year earlier, in January 2017, the unemployment rate was 10.1%, according to the Institute.
The final figure for January is 0.1 percentage points lower than the previous month, 0.5 percentage points lower than three months earlier and 2.2 percentage points lower than the same month in 2017.
Youth unemployment rate (15 to 24-year-olds), stood at 22.1% in January, down from 23% in December 2017.
The unemployment rate for adults increased by one tenth to 7.1%, and it is expected to remain the same in February.
The unemployed population in January was estimated at 409,400, down 3,000 people from December 2017.
These official unemployment rates do not reveal the actual number of people out of work in Portugal, according to a study published in a book by researchers of the University Institute of Lisbon, in March this year.
"The rate is double if we add the unemployed, the underemployed, inactive people who are not available to work, and those who are employed in employment centres," claimed researchers from the Centre for Research and Sociology Studies, revealing the true impact of the crisis on jobs in Portugal.
The resized unemployment rate was 17.5% at the end of last year, more than twice the official rate of 8.5%.
"During the crisis the real situation of unemployment was masked by a change of statistical criteria that led to the exclusion of official statistics from various hidden social realities," said researcher, Renato Miguel do Carmo.
