One in five workers in Portugal was on the minimum wage last year, a pretax sum of €505 a month in 14 payments.
In 2001, only 4% were on the then minimum wage and in 2013 the total was 12% of workers.
No doubt this rise in numbers of those whose income can hardly said to be adequate will please the various ministries and EC bodies involved, praising as they do Portugal’s ‘competitiveness,’ but the realities of living on €7,000 a year before deductions are challenging.
The hotel and restaurant sector has the largest percentage of workers on low wages with 26% on the minimum despite a boom in business due to increased tourism lauded by the government.
Manufacturing has 24.8% of its workers on the minimum but the electricity and gas sectors, with their justifiable reputations for high prices, stand out for having only 0.1% of workers receiving the minimum wage, followed by financial and insurance at 1.6%.
The Pordata figures relased today show that in 2013, only 50% of start-up companies in Portugal were still in business after two years of trading.
There was a depressing drop in employment in the private sector in 2013 with only 3.5 million people employed by companies, a figure below the four million between 2007 and 2009.
The Pordata figures show that 17% of the country’s public debt last year came from companies owned by the government, with 313 public sector companies adding to a total debt of around €38 billion - slightly down from 2010’s 19%.
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