The use of Green Receipts for casual and independent work has soared to unprecedented levels under José Socrates’ PS government.
The economic crisis and recession has seen their use break all records in the first quarter of 2009, with 81,000 people offering occasional, non-contracted services, representing an increase of 53 per cent on the first quarter of 2005 when 53,000 people worked with Green Receipts.
The statistics revealing the shocking truth of today’s precarious employment situation in Portugal was divulged on Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE)
Unemployment also has reached its highest point since 1986 when Portugal joined the European Union, officially representing 8.9 per cent of the working population, but unofficially expected to be as high as 10 per cent.
In practise, the INE estimates that 495,000 people are unemployed, but if the out of work who have not actively sought employment in the past four months are taken into account, that figure shoots up to 10 per cent of over half a million unemployed in a country with little more than five million workers.
Those living in the Algarve, working in the catering and hotel trades as well as the construction industry, have been most hit with an unemployment rate reaching 10.3 per cent.
With the economic crisis, companies are not only laying off staff but accepting them on an occasional basis through the Green Receipt system because that way they don’t have to pay pensions, national insurance contributions or have them permanently on contract.
Between the third quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009 the number of Green Receipts being passed soared by 13 per cent.
