In 2023, Portugal was the sixth country in the European Union (EU) with the highest proportion of workers aged between 55 and 64 in employment, surpassed only by Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania. It was also the fourth EU country where the weight increased the most between 2010 and 2023, and it is also one of the countries where the legal retirement age is highest.

According to Jornal de Negócios, which relies on data from a report on how to “keep older workers in the workforce” by the EU’s tripartite agency Eurofound, most countries have moved towards increasing the retirement age, but “extending working lives requires more than legal measures”.

The data allow us to conclude that the proportion of workers between 55 and 64 years old increased in the EU from 13.1% in 2010 to 19.8% in 2023. In Portugal, it is at 20.5%, the sixth highest value among the 27 Member States.

The evolution will be related to the aging of the Portuguese population and the fact that the country has, according to data presented in the same report, the fifth highest legal retirement age, the highest effective retirement age for men (66.6 years) and the third highest effective age for women (65.6 years), writes the publication.