Portuguese people work roughly two years more than the ‘European average’.
In real terms, this means workers here work roughly 38 years, as opposed to workers in countries like Italy (31.8 years), Poland (33.5 years) and Spain (35.2 years).
The figures compiled by Eurostat show however that workers in the ‘most economically successful countries’ do tend to work longer than those in countries with a lesser track record.
For example, British workers can look forwards to a working life of roughly 39.2 years, Swiss 42.7, Danes 39.9, Swedes and Finns 41.9 and 38.6 respectively.
Where Portugal’s situation fails slightly is in terms of how much GDP is spent on social support.
The European average sees countries investing 27.9% of GDP this way. In Portugal, only 24.6% goes towards social support.
Again, this isn’t ‘good’ but it could be a lot worse. In Romania (where workers are found to work an average of 33.5 years) only 14.4% of GDP goes on social support.
