The number of active contributors to Social Security, which funds retirements and other social benefits, would have begun to shrink last year if the participation of foreign workers in the national labour market had not increased, according to Jornal de Negócios.
In 2024, the number of active beneficiaries of the system increased by 2.4%, to approximately 5.6 million people, according to the Directorate-General for Social Security (DGSS) and the Institute of Informatics.
However, in the data broken down by beneficiary origin – national or foreign – it is clear that there was only growth among foreign contributors (+15.1%), which more than offset a 0.1% decline among those with Portuguese nationality.
With last year’s growth, foreign workers contributing to Social Security surpassed the one million mark for the first time, now representing almost a fifth of the contributors’ universe. The fact that the number of contributors (18.9% of the total) exceeds the contributions made (12.4%) is related to lower salaries.