Portugal has highest emigration rate in Europe

According to the news source Expresso, Portugal has the highest emigration rate in Europe with 2.3 million Portuguese of working age living overseas.

Citing data from the Emigration Observatory (Observatório da Emigração), some 850,000 young people aged between 15 and 39 are living overseas, corresponding to 30% of all those born in Portugal.
Emigration reached a peak between 2010 and 2019 with the highest figure recorded in 2013 when 120,000 Portuguese left the country. At present, around 2.3 million Portuguese live overseas.
According to José Carlos Marques, sociologist and a specialist in emigration who was interviewed by Expresso, “It is vital that the government invests in incentives to encourage émigrés to return and improve incentives for them to stay in Portugal”.
And the number of young Portuguese women who have left the country is having a serious effect on Portugal’s population rate. Some 20% of all births from Portuguese mothers take place overseas.
According to the ‘Atlas of Emigration’ Spain was the main destination for emigration from Portugal in 2022 with a total of 11,001 Portuguese, followed by Switzerland and the United Kingdom. France is the country with the highest number of Portuguese émigrés with 604,300.