Nearly a Third of Portugal's Part-Time Workers Are There Involuntarily, Finance Ministry Bulletin Finds

Portugal's labour market looks healthy on the surface, with unemployment low and full-time hiring rising. A new bulletin from the Finance Ministry points to a softer spot underneath: nearly a third of the country's part-time workers are in that arrangement not by choice, but because they cannot find a full-time job.

The involuntary third

According to the July quarterly economic bulletin from GPEARI (Gabinete de Planeamento, Estratégia, Avaliação e Relações Internacionais — the Finance Ministry's planning and strategy office), 31.8% of part-time workers say they are working reduced hours only because full-time work is unavailable. The remaining 68.2% cite personal or family reasons for choosing shorter hours.

Part-time work is not, by international standards, especially common in Portugal: it accounted for just 8.4% of total employment in 2024, well below the levels seen in much of northern Europe. But the share that is involuntary is a useful gauge of hidden slack — people who are counted as employed yet would work more if the market let them.

Better than the crisis years

The picture has improved markedly since the last downturn. Involuntary part-time work peaked at 38.3% in 2015, in the aftermath of the bailout years, when the overall part-time share also climbed — from 12.2% in 2008 to a high of 14.7% in 2012. The involuntary component fell between 2021 and 2023 before levelling off, and the most recent quarter suggests the trend is still moving in the right direction: in the first quarter of 2026, full-time employment rose 2.3% year on year while part-time employment fell 3.7%.

The contract divide

The bulletin also underscores how closely part-time work is tied to job insecurity. Among part-timers, 45.6% hold temporary contracts — against 54.4% on permanent terms — and the incidence of part-time work is more than four times higher among temporary staff (19.1%) than among permanent employees (4.3%). Permanent contracts also grew 3% over the year while temporary ones shrank 5.6%, a shift toward more stable employment.

That matters for pay. The bulletin flags a wage penalty of roughly 15% between temporary and permanent workers in comparable roles, a gap it describes as “larger and more persistent” when part-time hours and precarious contracts overlap. In other words, the workers most likely to be stuck in involuntary part-time positions are also the ones earning the least for equivalent work.

For anyone weighing a move to Portugal or negotiating a first contract here, the takeaway is nuanced. The headline labour numbers are genuinely strengthening, but a slice of the workforce is still underemployed, and the line between a secure full-time post and a lower-paid, temporary, part-time one remains a meaningful one to watch.