Five Things to Know About Brain Waste in Portugal

Here are some numbers that illustrate the challenges faced by skilled immigrants entering the Portuguese labor market.

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Grabiela é formada em Educação de Infância na Venezuela. Em Portugal não consegue reconhecimento do diploma e trabalha em estética.
Grabiela é formada em Educação de Infância na Venezuela. Em Portugal não consegue reconhecimento do diploma e trabalha em estética.
Foto: Tiago Berardo Lopes

An analysis by PÚBLICO — in partnership with Lighthouse Reports, El País, Financial Times, and Unbias The News— of data from the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) reveals a clear disparity between professionals born in Portugal and those who came to the country for work. Let’s look at some key figures.

How Portugal Compares to Europe

Dados: European Labour Force Survey - 2017-2022 / Eurostat
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Starting with the overall picture. Although Portugal shows differences between qualified national and foreign-born workers, it is below the European average regarding the overqualification gap between these two groups. Among Southern European countries, it even shows the lowest disparity between overqualified migrants and nationals: about 40% of foreigners work below their qualifications, 13% more than the proportion of nationals, which stands at 27%.

Portuguese Diploma Is Crucial for Working in the Field of Study

Dados: European Labour Force Survey - 2017-2022 / Eurostat
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Studying in Portugal is a significant step towards better integration of immigrants into the Portuguese labour market. Around 30% of foreign professionals who studied at a Portuguese university are overqualified for their job, a slightly higher number than nationals. The percentage of overqualification soars to 65% for immigrants with foreign diplomas.

Most Foreign Degree Recognitions Are Automatic

Dados: DGES
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Since the process was standardized in 2019, the demand for recognizing foreign higher education degrees in Portugal has increased. By October 2023, Portuguese institutions had recognized nearly 27,000 diplomas, with the annual numbers rising steadily after legislative changes were implemented.

Global South Immigrants Perform Better in Portugal

Portugal also stands out in the labor market integration gap between immigrants from the Global North and Global South. Immigrants from the Global South—Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America, and third-country nationals (TCNs)—are 12.6% less likely to be in overqualified jobs, 0.8% less likely to be underemployed, and 8.4% less likely to have temporary contracts compared to immigrants from the Global North (Europe, North America, and Oceania).

What do we mean when we talk about the brain waste of immigrants?

There are various indicators to measure brain waste, and the data journalism consortium focused on three:

  • Overqualification: occurs when individuals accept jobs far below their skill level, such as a doctor working as a nursing assistant, determined by education levels exceeding job requirements.
  • Underemployment: refers to those working fewer hours than they would like, such as a part-time teacher seeking full-time employment.
  • Unemployment: describes individuals actively seeking work but unable to find it, excluding those unable to work due to disability.

Gender Differences Also Exist

Brain waste also affects immigrants differently based on gender. Data shows that the overqualification gap is around 10% between male immigrants and nationals, rising to 14% when comparing women. It is possible to observe the same trend for underemployment (a gap of almost 1 percentage point between men and women) and unemployment (1.43 percentage points).

Brain Waste is an international investigation resulting from the collaboration between the following European media organizations:

Lighthouse Reports logo symbol Lighthouse Reports text
Financial Times logo
El Pais logo
Unbiased the News logo

The data cited in this work was obtained by Lighthouse Reports, an investigative journalism newsroom, which had exclusive access to microdata from the European Labor Force Survey, published by Eurostat. This data is normally only available to researchers and academics.

In addition to their own analysis and conclusions, they also collaborated with the data journalism teams of PÚBLICO, El País, The Financial Times and Unbias the News, who worked with the journalists of this team in analyzing and interpreting the data.

The complete methodology can be read at this link.

All numbers and visualizations mentioned in this work refer to data collected between 2017-2022, except for the United Kingdom, which only contributed to this survey until 2019.

For all indicators presented, the statistical significance of the difference between immigrants and natives was tested. In cases where the difference was not statistically significant, this information was not used.

Since some countries had small samples, it was decided to group some countries together, such as the Visegrad group, the Baltic countries, the Balkans and Bulgaria/Romania.

Data for Germany is not available in the original survey.

The following journalists contributed to this project:
Beatriz Ramalho da Silva, Eva Constantaras, Justin Casimir Braun, Maud Jullien, Tessa Pang, Halima Salat Barre, Ella Hollowood, Alan Smith, John Burn-Murdoch, Daniele Grasso, Borja Andrino, Emilio Sanches Hidalgo, Maria Martin Delgado, Christina Lee, Justin Yarga, Gabriela Ramirez, Pablo Linde, Rui Barros, José Volta e Pinto, Ana Maria Henriques, Joana Bourgard, Joana Gonçalves, Tiago Bernardo Lopes