INE Says 782 Thousand People Emigrated From Portugal Over Five Years
Revised INE figures show 782 thousand people left Portugal from 2021 to 2025, foreigners included. Why the count is far above earlier estimates.
Portugal’s national statistics institute, the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), now estimates that 782 thousand people left the country to live abroad between 2021 and 2025. The revised figure counts both Portuguese citizens and foreigners, and it is more than twice the highest estimate previously given by the Emigration Observatory (Observatório da Emigração), according to the newspaper Público.
For foreign residents, the revision matters directly. In 2025 alone, foreigners made up more than half of the permanent emigrants INE counted, ECO reported.
How the new count works
The jump comes from a change in method. INE used to base its emigration numbers on a labor force survey. It now uses administrative records and treats as a permanent emigrant anyone who stays outside the country for at least one year, CNN Portugal reported.
The revision changed past years sharply. Recorded departures for 2021 to 2024 rose from 124 thousand to more than 600 thousand. Adding 2025 brings the five-year total to more than 782 thousand.
Why the Observatory’s figure was lower
The Emigration Observatory had described annual departures as stable at between 60 thousand and 70 thousand people. On that basis, the five-year total would be no more than 350 thousand, less than half of INE’s new number.
Rui Pena Pires, a sociologist and former president of the Observatory, told Público the gap is largely about who is counted. The Observatory tracked only legal emigration by Portuguese citizens. INE also counts foreigners who disappear from national registers. CNN Portugal noted that the difference between the two results reflects different methods and does not necessarily mean either set of data is wrong.
Pena Pires said INE’s current approach is “much better” than the old one. He also raised a doubt: a foreigner dropping out of the records does not prove that person went home or settled elsewhere for good. Some foreigners, he said, may have left and then come back into Portugal irregularly, which he sees as one limit of the new method.
What it means for people living in Portugal
The new figures suggest that a large share of recent departures are foreigners rather than Portuguese nationals. That changes the picture of a country often described as losing its young people to emigration, and it puts foreign residents at the center of the numbers.
For immigrants and expats, the method has a practical side. INE now counts people as having left when they stop appearing in administrative records, and stays abroad of a year or more count as permanent emigration. Pena Pires’ caution means some people counted as departed may still be in the country.
The debate over the figures comes as labor shortages draw attention. On the same day, the business paper Negócios reported Banco de Portugal data showing foreign workers now make up 40% of the construction workforce, and the central bank’s governor, Álvaro Santos Pereira, has warned about worker shortages in construction and tourism and the harm smaller migration flows could do to jobs and GDP, according to Observador’s press review.
Sources: ECO, CNN Portugal, Observador
