Foreigners “saving” Portugal’s social security system

The total number of active Social Security contributors, who finance pensions and other social benefits, would have started to shrink last year if the participation of foreign workers in the national labor market had not increased, reveals business daily Jornal de Negócios.

In 2024, the number of active beneficiaries of the system increased 2.4%, to around 5.6 million people according to the Directorate-General of Social Security (DGSS) and Informatics Institute.

And from the data looking at the origin of the beneficiaries – national or foreign – , it can be seen that there was an increase among overseas contributors (+15.1%), which more than compensated a fall of 0.1% in the number of national insurance payers of Portuguese nationality.

With the  increase of immigrants the last year, foreign workers who pay Social Security contributions exceeded, for the first time, the one million individuals mark, representing almost a fifth of total taxpayers. The proportion of the number of foreign taxpayers (18.9% of the total) was greater than the contributions made (12.4%) was related to their lower salaries.