The Regional Director for Employment and Vocational Training highlighted in Ribeira Grande the results released today by the National Statistics Institute (INE) regarding employment in the second quarter of this year, according to which “the Azores have reached the highest employment figure ever recorded since the implementation of statistics series (1985).”
 
“The statistical data released today reveal that there are currently 114,979 employed Azoreans, representing the highest employment figure ever recorded in the Azores,” said Paula Andrade. She spoke on the sidelines of a visit to Alliance Healthcare that took place under the employment support measures.
 
“The approximately 115,000 employed Azoreans are the evidence that there have never been so many Azoreans in the labour market and that there has been a very significant increase in employment over the last year. Currently, there are 2,823 more employed Azoreans than a year ago and 7,048 more Azoreans employed than those registered at the beginning of this legislative term, which started in late 2016," stated the government official.
 
According to the Regional Director for Employment and Vocational Training, INE also released other data highlighting the clear trajectory of employment growth in the Region.
 
“In addition to the very significant growth in employment, there is also a very significant increase in the working population, already representing 125,289 Azoreans, being also the highest figure recorded in the current Employment Survey series,” revealed Paula Andrade. In this regard, she noted that this figure "evidences an extraordinary growth of the working population in just three months, i.e., 3,210 more Azoreans, according to INE.”
 
For the Regional Director, the data now released “confirm the merit of the public policies implemented by the Regional Government. They have contributed to a further reduction in the unemployment rate, which fell to 8.2%, reaching the lowest level of the unemployment rate in the current series since 2011.”
 
In turn, Paula Andrade noted that the reduction in the unemployment rate was not higher because “with this considerable increase in the employed population in the Azores, there was, simultaneously, an extraordinary growth of the working population in the archipelago in the last three months."
 
The Regional Director also pointed out that “with this same increase in employment, the unemployment rate in the Azores would have fallen to only 5.8% if the working population had stabilised compared to the previous quarter.”
 
“The INE data shows that the strategy pursued by the Government in recent years towards the promotion of employment growth and unemployment reduction has been delivering results," stressed Paula Andrade. Nevertheless, "there are still social and economic challenges we must face, and we want to continue to face them and further improve."