“The unemployment rate stood at 6.0%, a value higher than in August and June 2025 (0.1 percentage points in both) and lower than in September 2024 (0.5 percentage points),” states the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

The INE (National Institute of Statistics) also released the final figures for August, revising downwards the unemployment rate for that month to 5.9% (compared to the initially estimated 6.1%), a value 0.1 percentage points higher than in July 2025, but 0.2 percentage points lower than in May 2025 and 0.4 percentage points lower than in August of the previous year.

In September, the labour underutilization rate was estimated at 10.2%, a value higher than that recorded in August (10.1%), but lower than that recorded a year earlier (10.9%).

The inactivity rate reached 30.1%, "the lowest value since February 1998".

In nominal terms, the INE estimates that at the end of September there were 5.62 million people in the active population (increases of 0.2% sequentially and 3.0% year-on-year) and 2.43 million in the inactive population (decreases of 0.3% sequentially and 2.0% year-on-year).

Within the active population, 5.29 million were employed – 0.2% more than in August and 3.6% more than in September of last year – and 337,000 were unemployed, a rise of 1.3% compared to the previous month and 5.2% compared to last year.

In September, the unemployment rate for women (6.6%) exceeded that of men (5.4%) by 1.2 percentage points, while the unemployment rate for adults remained the same as in May.

Meanwhile, the youth unemployment rate stood at 18.1%, reaching its lowest level since October 2022, when it was 17.8%.