According to the study prepared by the Social Studies Office of CGTP, based on data from INE, last year around 100,000 jobs were lost, in net terms, which corresponds to an annual decrease of 2 percent, interrupting growth that occurred six years ago.

For the union, this is the proof that “the measures that the Government implemented in response to Covid-19 were not sufficient, nor adequate to avoid the destruction of employment and the increase of unemployment”.

“Not only did they not prohibit dismissals, but they reduced wages and income to over 1.4 million workers across the country (...), with repercussions on the economy and on society, adding yet another crisis at this time”, states the document.
According to the analysis, workers with precarious jobs were the first to be made redundant, which is the main reason for job loss and unemployment, at a higher rate than in previous years. However, precarious work increased again in the second half of last year, although it did not return to the level prior to the pandemic, “due to the growth of false self-employment and other forms even more precarious than fixed-term contracts”.

“In the 4th quarter of 2020, the precariousness measured through the INE data (which undervalue their real number) reached 710.4 thousand workers, more than half of whom were women (384,000)”, highlighted the study.

Precariousness affects 17.6 percent of the total wage earners, always higher among women workers (18.3 percent compared to 16.7 percent among men), at all ages. Among young women aged 15 to 34 years, non-permanent contracts exceed 36 percent, 65 percent among those under 25 years old and close to 30 percent in the group aged 25 to 34 years.

According to the study, in addition to job instability, with repercussions also on personal and family life, precarious contracts result in wages 20 percent to 30 percent lower than those of workers with permanent contracts. According to CGTP, in 2020 real unemployment reached almost 600,000 workers, having increased by more than 68,000 compared to 2019. The number of unemployed women last year reached almost 318,0000, corresponding to more than half of the total real unemployment (53 percent).

The survey also pointed out that “the majority of unemployed women do not have access to unemployment benefits”, given that just over a third do so.

In addition “the values ??earned are, on average, very low”, being €503 in 2020, that is, below the poverty line, which was €540 in 2019. Last year 20.2 percent of women in Portugal were in a situation of poverty or social exclusion, a figure higher than that of men (19.4 percent), but decreasing compared to 2015 when it reached 28.1 percent.