The Regional Director for Employment and Vocational Training highlighted today the data released by the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training (IEFP) regarding July, which show the Azores as the only region of the country where unemployment fell, compared to the same period of the previous year. 

“Faced with a particularly challenging and uncertain economic environment, the Azores have, once again, registered a decrease in unemployment, similarly to months of April, May and June, when we were already the only region with falling unemployment among the seven regions of the country,” highlighted Paula Andrade. 

"This fact makes the Azores a reference in the national context," added the government official. 

According to data recently released by the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training, the Azores registered a reduction in unemployment of (-) 1.4% in July 2020, compared to the same month of the previous year, “which represents 101 fewer unemployed within a year.” 

“At the end of July, there were 6,957 unemployed people in the Region looking for their first or a new job, a figure that demonstrates the stability of employment in the Azores, following the measures created and implemented in the meantime by the Regional Government in the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic," stressed the Regional Director. 

Paula Andrade spoke on the sidelines of a visit to Garcez e Santos - Yoçor Yogurt Factory in Ribeira Grande, an entity that, after benefiting from the layoff measures, applied for the Regional Incentive for the Standardisation of Business Activity (IRNAE), entering a new phase of stabilisation and recovery of activity. 

“The Regional Government has not only created and implemented a wide range of extraordinary measures, some of them innovative in the national context, but has also undertaken an enormous effort to complement and reinforce the scope of national measures in the Region. The primary goal was to support the economy, protect employment and ensure workers' income,” said the Regional Director for Employment and Vocational Training. 

According to the IEFP, long-term unemployment has seen a year-on-year variation of -24.2%. 

As for the job placement ratio, i.e., the ratio of job responses to job advertisements, regardless of the entry date, this figure stood at 73.5 at the end of July. 

For Paula Andrade, the stability of the regional employment market "reflects the measures implemented by the Regional Government, a strategy that has yielded results proven both by data from the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training and by the indicators of the National Statistics Institute (INE)."