More qualified young Portuguese leaving country for “better living conditions”

Lisbon: In spite of all the government policy announcements designed to ‘encourage qualified young people to stay in this country’, the opposite is happening – and has been increasing over the last three years.

In fact, the number of young (usually university graduates) who have left Portugal ‘for a period of a year or more’ since 2022 has reached almost 100,000 (ie is equivalent to 1% of the population).

The figures have been released by statistics institute INE. They show that the numbers of men who leave are roughly double the numbers of women. Only in 2021 (due to restrictions brought in because of Covid-19), “Portugal registered an inversion of emigration”. But since then, the levels of citizens heading out are similar to those registered in the 1970s, writes Correio da Manhã. The only difference being that this latest ‘wave’ has a completely different scholastic profile. In the 70s people quitting the country were unqualified; now they are highly qualified: with over 42% having university degrees, and more than 34% having completed education up to the age of 18.

The ages of new emigrés are essentially between 20 and 29 – and their destinations tend to be ‘other European countries’ where earnings are higher and accommodation costs, proportionally, are lower.

INE’s wider findings also hark back to the 1970s: while admitting that the resident population has never been larger (thanks to immigration), the country has also never been so old. The country now has 192.4 elderly people for every hundred young; a quarter of the population is already over the age of 65.

“If we go back to 1970, the country has never had so few children in the 10-14 age group. But from the age of 50 onwards, we are at an all-time high”, writes Jornal de Notícias – adding that in 1971, “for every person of 65 years or more, there were 6.4 people aged 15-64. Now, that number is down to 2.6 (less than half)” – and this means that the system of social security “has nothing to do with current realities.

To ‘save the Social Security system’ is not to maintain it as it is now, “but to bring it up to date with modern times”, says the paper, without elaborating on how this will be done.