Portuguese emigration has changed a lot in the last decade. In the last three years, Portugal has had, for the first time in several decades, more young Portuguese people return to Portugal than leave the country. Emigration is no longer a journey of no return, but rather a round trip, for an increasing number of young Portuguese people.
On the other hand, while Portugal continues to have many young people leaving for countries with higher salaries, the country also started to receive more young people from those countries. Something changed, and the emigration road to the richest countries no longer only had an exit direction, but also an entry direction. Since 2019, the number of young people from high-wage countries (EU, USA, UK) coming to work in Portugal has exceeded the number of Portuguese people going to these countries.
The graph summarizes these two comparisons. Compares the total outflows of Portuguese (red line), with the inflows of returning Portuguese (black lines) and also with the inflows of foreigners coming from high-wage countries (blue line).
It shows that, in the last four years, at the same time that around 30 thousand Portuguese people left Portugal per year, more than 53 thousand people with Portuguese nationality entered, of which 31 thousand were returning to the country, as they were born in Portugal. And these Portuguese who returned are mostly young workers (63% are under 39 years old).
Today, at any party for a 25 to 35 year old, there are always friends who are missing because they are abroad. But there are also always many, who have already lived and worked abroad, and who have decided to return. Some for personal reasons, others for professional opportunities, some following the multinational company they work for. Anyone who visits a technology company knows they will find them.
The graph also shows (blue line) that, on average, each year, around 45 thousand foreigners from countries with average salaries above those of Portugal also entered, including around 33 thousand from the EU27. Last year, five thousand citizens from the USA, six thousand from Italy, almost four thousand from Germany and many others from France, requested permanent residence in Portugal. They are mostly young. Around 60% of these are under 45 years of age. Only 15% are over 65 years old.
What did these foreigners come here to do? Many came with multinationals from their countries, or to technology company centers. Others came to Portugal because they married Portuguese people, or came to develop projects, in tourism, in universities, in startups. Some work for remote clients, or are fully or partially teleworking.
Do the best leave or stay?
In the discussion about the departure of young Portuguese people, the idea has been expressed that the number of departures is making a huge dent in our workforce, especially because more and more qualified young people are leaving. And that, if young people leave for countries with higher wages, as long as this wage gap remains, in the fight to attract talent, we will continue to lose qualified young people to richer countries. They thus argue that we are in a Brain Drain situation, similar to that in developing countries, where, despite qualified workers being scarce, they are more likely to emigrate, taking with them investment in human capital, to more developed countries.
The argument of loss of human capital, in favor of richer countries, was completely true in the period between 2011 and 2015. Afterwards, outflows decreased and inflows of qualified workers increased. Since 2019, in migrations between Portugal and the richest countries, the balance of workers and qualifications has been in our favor. The 45 thousand who are entering annually, coming from high-wage countries, include a greater number of graduates than the 30 thousand Portuguese who are leaving.
The Economic Bulletin of the Bank of Portugal, for October, has the Emigration of young Portuguese people as a highlighted topic. It shows that, in the last 20 years, among young people who emigrate, there has been an increase in the proportion with higher education (from 11% to 30%). But it also shows that the qualifications of the young people who stayed increased even more (from 15% to 38.5%). In fact, in the last twenty years, the qualifications of those who emigrated were always lower than those of young people residing in Portugal. And this difference even increased (from 4 percentage points to 8).
Data from Banco de Portugal show that the proportion of graduates, among young people aged 25 to 34 who emigrated, is 20% lower than among those who reside in Portugal. On the contrary, the proportion of young Portuguese who emigrated with only basic education is 40% higher than those who remained in Portugal. In other words, among young Portuguese people, the propensity to emigrate is lower among the most qualified, which is exactly the opposite of the brain drain situation.
Looking at the aggregate numbers and comparing the total number of people who completed a degree in Portugal, with the net increase in employment of graduates in our country, we see that there is a very high positive balance in favor of Portugal. In the last four years, the number of graduates working in Portugal increased by 320 thousand, while universities and polytechnics trained only 230 thousand new graduates, a positive balance of 90 thousand.
Taking into account that graduate unemployment in 2021 was already very low, and that around 25 thousand graduates retired in these 4 years, the question remains: how did the number of graduates working in our country grow so much above the number we trained? Where did the positive balance of 90 thousand graduates come from?
The answer must include a strong contribution from net migration. Which means that, in four years, 40 to 50 thousand graduates left the country, but 150 to 160 thousand graduates entered. Where did they come from? Around 30 thousand are included among the 100 thousand Portuguese who returned. Another 60 thousand are part of the approximately 200 thousand citizens from high-wage countries who entered Portugal. The rest are doctors, managers, engineers or programmers, coming from Brazil, India and many other countries. This is not a talent drain scenario. But before strong attraction capacity.
Conclusion
In this article I highlight five facts: 1) In the last three years, more Portuguese people returned to Portugal than left the country; 2) The Portuguese who are returning are mostly young workers; 3) Since 2018, Portugal has attracted more workers from high-wage countries than it has lost workers to high-wage countries. 4) According to the Bank of Portugal, proportionally, young people who leave are less qualified than those who stay; 5) According to INE, in the last four years, the employment of graduates in Portugal has increased much more than the number of graduates we have trained.
These facts force us to rethink the terms of the discussion about the emigration of young people in Portugal. If we explain the departure of young people just because average salaries are higher in other European countries, how can we explain that so many are returning from countries with higher salaries? If Portugal does not have an economy capable of creating interesting jobs for our young people, why has it been attracting so many young workers from countries like Germany, France, Italy, or the USA?
The structural change that occurred in migration placed the country in a new reality, in which Portugal emerges as a country capable of attracting talent, even from the most developed countries. The structure of Portuguese migrations approached the pattern of those existing among EU27 countries (North-North), in which there are worker movements in both directions, and moved away from the neo-classical migration pattern (North-South), in which worker flows occur only in one direction (from the poor to the rich country). This last model, which characterizes migration between the EU27 and developing countries, was the dominant one in Portugal’s relationship with EU countries since the 1960s, until a decade ago. But today it is no longer the most appropriate way to frame a reality that has changed.
This change means that we have to look at our young emigrants, not as a loss for the country, but as an opportunity. Promoting, among them, the opportunities that arise in Portugal, mobilizing them to be ambassadors of Portugal in the areas in which they are asserting themselves, and counting on the fact that many will return, and that they will return with a wealth of international experience, which must be valued.
Within the European framework, Portugal appears among the countries with a highest rate of youth emigration. But countries like Luxembourg, Ireland or Switzerland also have emigration rates above the EU27 average. And this shows more that their young people are more open and international, than it shows that these countries are condemned to decadence.
Today, given the strong increase in those returning, and the ability that the country has demonstrated in attracting talent from other countries, we should not cry over the spilled milk of those who choose to leave the country, because we know that many will later choose to return. Today, for young Portuguese people, as for many Europeans, the geographical area in which they want to work is not their parish, nor the city in which they grew up, but rather the whole of Europe or the whole world. We have to continue working, and maintain the right incentives, to convince them that returning to Portugal, at some stage in their lives, will be positive for them, because if they return, it will certainly be positive for the country.