Self-employed workers flee the Center and West of the country to Greater Lisbon

When the pandemic began to ease, between 2021 and 2022, the number of self-employed workers fell in the North (the region of the country where this type of professionals traditionally has the greatest weight) and also in the West region, having increased very sharply in the Greater Lisbon region, the National Statistics Institute (INE) revealed yesterday.

Then, between 2022 and 2023, the decline in the number of self-employed professionals continued to increase in the West and Center, having at this stage begun to flourish in the North region, which recovered some of the destruction of this type of employment in 2022, even that has not been able to compensate for the loss recorded that year.

According to calculations made in the three years under analysis in the new INE publication of annual Employment Statistics, although the North continues, without a doubt, to concentrate the largest number of self-employed workers, with more than 37% of the national total, the region lost some weight in this indicator compared to 2021, when it was at 38.3%.

Last year, the North region had 263 thousand self-employed workers, stabilizing at a slight decrease compared to 266 thousand in 2021.

The Greater Lisbon region has always been attracting or seeing the emergence of this type of professionals in the years that mark the end of the pandemic. In Lisbon, the weight of this type of professionals rose from almost 17%, in 2021, to 20%, last year, when an average of 139 thousand isolated workers were counted by INE.

As mentioned, the Central and Western regions were the ones that were most deprived of this type of employment. According to INE, the Center lost 14 thousand professionals between 2021 and 2023. The West and Vale do Tejo were left without 9 thousand self-employed workers.

The institute shows in the original employment survey, referring to 2023, that there is a certain decline in self-employment, whose population fell by almost 1% (compared to 2022) to a total of 699 thousand people in this condition, to the detriment of freelance work. account, which increased 2.6% last year, now covering around 4.6 million people.
In this new analysis released yesterday and which focuses solely on the universe of those 699 thousand self-employed employees, INE provides more details.

For example, of this “total of 698.9 thousand self-employed workers in 2023, 72.3% (505 thousand) had 10 or more clients and none of them was considered dominant, that is, none represented, individually, 75% or more of the worker’s income from the activity (after deduction of taxes).

In this sense, it appears that self-employed workers in Portugal have managed, on average, to expand their client base to the point where none of them are dominant for their turnover or business. A sign of less economic dependence.

“That proportion is 4 percentage points (pp) higher than that observed in 2022 (68.3%) and 7.6 pp higher than in 2021 (64.7%)”, adds INE. On the other hand, “only 6.9% (48.2 thousand) of self-employed workers indicated that they had, in the last twelve months, just one client (which represents a decrease of 1.5 pp in relation to the previous year and of 3.3 pp compared to two years before)”.

“When a self-employed person has only one client or, having two or more clients, one is dominant, it is considered that there is economic dependence”, notes INE.
According to calculations by DN/Dinheiro Vivo, in terms of demographic profiles, at a national level (in 2023), self-employment is much more common among men (62% of the total) than among women (38% ).

Self-employed workers have a rather young profile: this type of work dominates the age group from 35 to 64 years old, with 74% of the total. Younger people (under 35 years old) represent just 13% of the total.

Based on INE data, it is also possible to see that the majority of these professionals have basic educational qualifications (more than 45% have up to the 9th year of schooling) and tend to be more linked to the services sector (more than 69% of the total).