The gradual decline in unemployment from 2013 has been achieved by ignoring the increasing number of unemployed that are not recognised by the statistics.
For the first time, the unofficial unemployment level has exceeded the official version, according to the Crisis Barometer report entitled "Crisis and the labour market: less unemployment without more jobs" released today.
The analysis by the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, looked at the various forms of unemployment and underemployment, and made prudent estimates of the previous employment status of those who had recently emigrated, all of which gave an actual unemployment rate of 29% of the working population in the second half of 2014 if those workers that left the country had remained here.
According to the report, rather than a decline in unemployment, "it is perhaps more appropriate to speak of unemployment stabilising at very high levels and employment stabilisation at a much reduced level than estimated at the beginning of the Adjustment Progrannme."
The report indicates that the job creation numbers recently announced by the government were based on weak foundations.
Excluding the official figure for the ‘occupied unemployed,’ quantified as employed by the National Statistics Institute, there were 463,600 jobs destroyed between 2011 and the second half of 2013, with just 37,900 jobs created.
Finally, the current unemployment figure "includes more unprotected unemployed than before the adjustment programme" and that employment generated in Portugal is based mainly on jobs that are “underpaid and without the prospect of continuity and true integration into the labour market.”
