ONE in 10 employees contracted for a small, medium or large company and paying social security contributions in 2006 was a foreign immigrant.
Eighteen per cent of Portuguese bosses that filled out salary declarations to the tax authorities pay wages to foreign workers.
These figures, supplied by the Ministry of Employment and Social Security’s Information Institute (Instituto de Informática do Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade Social (MTSS), demonstrates the importance of foreign workers in generating wealth in Portugal.
The number of foreign workers in Portugal varies greatly from region to region. The number of foreign workers is, not surprisingly, most notable in the Algarve, and stands at around 34 per cent of the total employed workforce.
The capital, Lisbon, has the greatest number of foreign workers (40 per cent of the total workforce) with the main immigrant groups being Brazilians, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Moldovans, Romanians, Bulgarians and other European Union citizens.
Setúbal and Aveiro (21 and 37 per cent respectively) also have high concentrations of foreign workers.
The areas that show the least incidence of immigrant workers are in the north: Viana do Castelo, Braga, Porto, Vila Real, Bragansa, Viseu and Guarda, all having less than 13 per cent of the total workforce.
In the Algarve, an average of 40 per cent of all companies counted foreigners among their workforce, rising to 49 per cent in Albufeira, 47 per cent in Loulé, and 46 per cent in Lagos.
In the Lower Alentejo, Leiria and Castelo Branco, the percentage varied between 13 and 20 per cent, while the central region was as low as 13 per cent.
When it came to the size of companies which declared they had foreigners working for them on their books, the average size most likely to employ immigrant work had 32 employees (of which four typically would be foreigners) whereas in the Algarve that figure could rise to as high as 13.
According to the Portuguese immigration authorities SEF (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras) there were 321,000 registered immigrants with authorisation to residency in Portugal in 2006.
However, SEF estimates that there could be another 300,000 illegal immigrants working in Portugal that don’t show up in official statistics or public accounts.
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