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Portugal Employment and Sectoral Composition of the Labor Force
From 1960 to 1973, Portuguese policy measures supported
a
shift of resources, including labor, from low-productivity
toward
high-productivity uses, especially export-oriented
industries.
Rapid and accelerated economic growth was reflected in the
profound alteration of the sectoral composition of the
work
force. Between 1960 (the year after Portugal became a
charter
member of EFTA) and 1973, the share of the civilian labor
force
engaged in agriculture, forestry, and fishing fell from
nearly 44
percent to just under 28 percent, whereas the share of
labor
engaged in industry (including construction) increased
from
slightly less than 29 percent to almost 36 percent, and in
the
services sector (including transport and communications)
from
nearly 28 percent to slightly more than 36 percent. The
shift of
labor out of agriculture involved a reduction of the
number
engaged in that sector (a decline of about 550,000 workers
between 1960 and 1973), as well as in the proportion of
farmers
in the total labor force.
Because of heavy emigration, the working population of
continental Portugal shrank from more than 3.1 million in
1960 to
just only 2.9 million in 1973, and employment fell by an
annual
rate averaging 0.5 percent. The rapid shrinkage in the
number of
workers in agriculture was not accompanied by an equal or
greater
rise in the industrial and services sectors. Nearly two
out of
every three Portuguese taking up nonagricultural
employment
during this period did so in another West European
country.
France was, even at the beginning of the 1990s, host to
about 80
percent of the emigrant workers, most of whom worked at
unskilled
or semi-skilled jobs. The 110,000 Portuguese in Germany,
by
contrast, had found higher-skilled work, with some
two-thirds
employed in industry in 1977. Consequently, net emigration
between 1960 and 1973 exceeded 1 million, a number greater
than
the natural increase in the Portuguese population. In the
thirteen years of war, from 1961 to 1974, 1.5 million
Portuguese
had seen military service in Africa, and during 1974 one
in every
four adult males was in the armed forces. During this
period,
unemployment was kept down to about 4 percent (and to less
than 3
percent in the early 1970s), largely because of massive
labor
emigration to industrialized Western Europe and the
military
draft.
After the revolution, the demobilization of the
military
draftees and the return of Portuguese nationals from
Africa
produced important additions to the mainland population
and labor
force. From a combined strength of 220,000 at the
beginning of
1974, the armed forces demobilized some 95,000 persons in
that
year and 60,000 in 1975. Furthermore, an estimated 500,000
returnees (retornados) were repatriated, mainly
from
Angola and Mozambique, and most of them were totally
without
resources, having had to leave the former colonies with
only the
barest essentials. Initially, their former occupations
made them
difficult to integrate into the metropolitan economy: 67
percent
had held service jobs (as public employees or office
workers),
whereas only 20 percent had been engaged in industry, and
4
percent in agriculture. Consequently, the Portuguese
government
had to shoulder an extremely heavy burden in the form of
the
various benefits granted to the returnees, including cash
subsidies, provision of hotel accommodations, and
assistance with
purchases of essential goods. The sum of these benefits
was
estimated at 14 billion escudos (for value of the
escudo--see Glossary)
in 1976, or about 11 percent of total government
spending. In all, the increase in the civilian population
from
1974 to 1976 was probably about 900,000, i.e., 10 percent
of the
total population in 1973.
Following this brief population burst in the number of
mainland residents, Portugal's population and labor force
resumed
their natural rates of growth; for example, in the 1980-89
decade, the annual percentage increases were 0.5 percent
and 1.4
percent, respectively. Between 1973 and 1990, Portugal's
labor
force grew by more than 1.8 million (see
table 6,
Appendix), of
which more than half was absorbed in the services sector
and over
a third in the industrial sector. Although the share of
the work
force in agriculture, forestry, and fishing resumed its
historical relative decline (from nearly 28 percent of the
total
in 1973 to almost 18 percent in 1990), the absolute number
of
workers in that sector increased slightly. Industry's
share in
the labor force remained virtually unchanged between 1973
and
1990 (at about 35 percent), but the services sector nearly
added
1.2 million employees, its share in the total rising from
over 36
percent in 1973 to 47.4 percent in 1990. A major
explanation for
this growth of almost 11 percent was the explosive
increase of
civil service employment after the Revolution of 1974.
Data as of January 1993
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