According to the Emigration Observatory, more than 30,000 Portuguese enrolled as workers in Britain during the course of 2014. A similar figure was recorded in 2013, the Observatory said.


Nurses and specialised construction workers also continued to be professions in which Portuguese were employed in the UK.


Researchers also found that an unspecified number of migrants (said to be “thousands”) from former Portuguese colonies in India, such as Goa, also entered the UK with Portuguese passports, despite many of them never having set foot in Portugal.


Second on the list of countries Portuguese chose to escape unemployment and low wages was Switzerland, which saw its Portuguese labour force rise by 20,000 last year.