In January this year, more than 164,000 unemployed people in Portugal received no State support, making it rather difficult to get by.
For those that did qualify, the average unemployment benefit was €486.
The good news is that the number of registered unemployed has been falling steadily since the dark days of 2014, but there are remain many thousands who do not receive any kind of benefits.
In January, 164,014 people were without work and without any sort of help. This is 47% of the total number of unemployed: 350,772.
Even so, the figure this year is lower than in January 2018, when almost 54% of the unemployed did not receive the unemployment benefit.
The worst January of the last ten was in 2017, when the economy was booming. At that time more than 55% of registered unemployed were without support.
Comments
The governments registered unemployed figures cannot be accepted as an accurate reflection of the real number of unemployed because if people are told that they will not be receiving any financial help even if they register, many will not bother to register as unemployed.