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The number of Portuguese workers leaving the country hit a new annual high last year, with the departure of 121,418 – ahead of the previous record set in 1966 when just over 120,000 left, according to National Statistics Institute data.
Every month an average of 10,118 people depart – mainly to France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK and former Portuguese colony Angola – and this trend looks set to continue, writes Diário de Notícias.
The newspaper adds that "today’s exodus is different from the 1966 one,” in which –
the people who emigrated were mainly workers without higher education, who sent most of the money they earned to Portugal. Today’s emigrants are characteristically youngsters with higher education who are leaving to work in other European countries after being educated at Portuguese expense.
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