Working in Portugal: what jobs pay, which occupations are in demand and where to look
The minimum wage in Portugal in 2026 is €920 a month before deductions. The national average for a full month of full-time work is about €1,580 (the latest figures broken down by region are for October 2024). Pay in Lisbon and its suburbs is noticeably higher than in the Algarve and the rural interior. Your employer deducts 11% for Segurança Social and an advance on IRS income tax, and you are paid 14 times a year. Below, in order: the minimum and average wage, by region and by occupation; how much you take home and how to read a payslip; who employers are looking for and where to find seasonal work; how to register at a job centre, where to look for vacancies and how to avoid scammers; how to get your degree recognised and what to do if your profession is regulated.
The minimum wage in 2026
Since 1 January 2026 the minimum wage in mainland Portugal has been €920 a month before deductions for full-time work (Decree-Law 139/2025). In Madeira it is €980, in the Azores €966; what counts is where you work. That is €5.31 an hour on a 40-hour week: by law, the monthly amount is multiplied by 12 and divided by 52 weeks and by the number of hours worked a week. Part-time, the minimum is proportionally lower.
From €920 you take home €818.80: 11% goes to Segurança Social, and no income tax is withheld from the minimum wage. It is paid 14 times a year, €12,880 in total. More in our answer ‘The minimum wage in Portugal in 2026 is €920’.
There is no decree for 2027 yet. Under a 2024 agreement the minimum is due to rise to €970, and the same figure appears in the draft budget submitted on 8 October 2026. The unions want more: UGT €1,000, CGTP €1,100. The decree usually comes out in December.
The average wage: what INE counts
Every quarter the statistics office INE publishes the average gross pay per job. For April to June 2026 it was €1,835 a month, but that figure includes bonuses, overtime and holiday pay, which are paid mostly in summer. Without them, for normal hours only, it is €1,342. For the whole of 2025 the figures were €1,694 and €1,277 respectively. INE counts jobs, not people: someone with two jobs is counted twice, and part-time work is included too. INE does not give the median (the amount half of workers earn less than) in these releases.
Pay depends most of all on the sector. Average pay for normal hours, without bonuses (April to June 2026):
Hotels and restaurants: €974
Construction: €1,082
Retail and wholesale: €1,200
Health and social care: €1,407
Finance and insurance: €2,045
Education: €2,124
IT and communications: €2,184
“Rich expats have come over and probably don't want to know that engineers here work for 1300 a month… that the median salary doesn't even reach one and a half grand gross, that the average car is 23 years old and that they're judging from their wonderful white towers”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkchatlisboa03.06.2026
Pay by region and occupation
Figures by region and occupation exist only for October 2024, from employers' annual returns (Quadros de Pessoal). They show earnings for a full month of full-time work: basic pay, regular allowances, meal allowance and overtime, but not holiday or Christmas pay. The national average is €1,576.
By region:
Grande Lisboa (Lisbon and its suburbs): €1,936
Greater Porto: €1,620
Península de Setúbal (Setúbal, Almada, Seixal): €1,545
The Azores: €1,432, Centro: €1,411, Alentejo: €1,410, Madeira: €1,407
Oeste e Vale do Tejo: €1,347, Algarve: €1,320
Between towns the gap is even wider: Oeiras €2,214, Lisbon €2,121, Porto €1,930, Braga €1,545, Cascais €1,532, Coimbra €1,528, Faro €1,484, Funchal €1,465, Albufeira €1,277.
By occupation: managers €3,280, professionals with a degree €2,396, technicians €1,949, clerical staff €1,390, machine operators and drivers €1,341, skilled workers €1,247, sales and service workers €1,162, unskilled workers €1,060.
How much you take home
In Portugal salaries are quoted before deductions (bruto). Your employer withholds 11% for Segurança Social and an advance on IRS income tax (retenção na fonte) according to a table that depends on the amount, your marital status and how many children you have. On top of that, the employer pays a further 23.75% in social security out of its own pocket. The final tax bill is worked out in spring from your tax return: if too much was withheld, you get it back; if too little, you pay the difference.
What you take home each month under the tables in force since January 2026 (mainland, unmarried; in brackets, the same with two children):
€920: €818.80 (€818.80)
€1,000: €854.00 (€890.00)
€1,200: €971.78 (€1,040.36)
€1,500: €1,166.83 (€1,235.41)
€2,000: €1,478.66 (€1,547.24)
€3,000: €2,006.86 (€2,075.44)
Twice a year you get an extra month's pay: holiday pay (subsídio de férias, before your holiday) and Christmas pay (subsídio de Natal, by 15 December). Tax on them is withheld separately, as on an ordinary salary of the same amount. If you agree in writing, you can receive them in monthly instalments (duodécimos): your monthly pay is then higher, but there is no separate payment in summer or December.
Meal allowance (subsídio de refeição) is paid on top of your salary and in 2026 is tax-free up to €6.15 per working day in cash or €10.455 on a meal card; anything above that is taxed.
If you are under 35, IRS Jovem applies: for ten years from when you start work, part of your income is tax-free: all of it in the first year, 75% in years two to four, 50% in years five to seven and 25% in years eight to ten, up to €29,542.15 a year. To have less withheld straight away, tell your employer that you qualify and which year you are in; otherwise you only get the difference back through your tax return. People who had NHR status are not eligible.
On 9 October 2026 Parliament approved lower IRS rates for 2026. Once the new tables come out, less will be withheld, and the difference for earlier months will be refunded through your tax return. How the tax itself works is explained in How to calculate and pay IRS income tax in Portugal.
“The employer acts as a tax agent when it comes to paying social security contributions and IRS income tax advances. Social security contributions are made up of two parts: the bigger one, paid by the employer, which is roughly 2/3 of the total, and the smaller third, yours, which is deducted from your pay just like the IRS advances and shows up on your payslip. Usually the gross figure is quoted, i.e. before your share of social security and the income tax advances are taken off.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkmyptaxes31.10.2024
“Same thing happened to me, yeah. They gave it back. Plus you actually end up with 14 salaries a year, in July and December they pay you double, at least that's how it was for me, they explained that's what the law says.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linktaxinportugal05.09.2024
“Because these are two separate allowances. In Portugal there are 14 salaries a year. Here, apparently, they've gone for the option where the 13th and 14th salaries are paid as 1/12 every calendar month”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkmyptaxes03.10.2025
How to read your payslip
Every time you are paid, your employer must give you a payslip (recibo de vencimento) showing who is paying you, your name, NISS number and job title, your basic pay and allowances, the period covered, what was deducted and how much you will receive. Not giving you one breaks the Labour Code.
The usual lines: vencimento base: basic pay; subsídio de alimentação or de refeição: meal allowance, with the number of days and the daily amount; trabalho suplementar: overtime; subsídio de férias and de Natal: holiday and Christmas pay, or their monthly instalments (duodécimos). Below that come the deductions: Segurança Social at 11% and retenção IRS with the percentage withheld. The last line, líquido, is what will reach your account.
Keep your payslips: banks use them to check your income for a loan, the immigration agency AIMA looks at them when you renew your residence permit, and they also show whether your contributions have been paid. You can also check your contributions in your Segurança Social Direta online account.
Who employers are looking for
The clearest picture comes from the vacancies employers lodge with IEFP job centres. At the end of August 2026 they had 19,248 unfilled vacancies. The most sought after:
General labourers in industry, construction and transport: 2,075
Shop assistants: 1,407
Cooks, waiting staff and other service staff: 1,341, plus another 1,017 kitchen assistants
Construction workers (other than electricians): 1,204
Metalworkers and mechanics: 1,069
Care workers: 900
Farm workers: 780, more than half of them in the Alentejo
Cleaners: 760
IT specialists: 749, almost all in and around Lisbon
Two thirds of the vacancies are in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region (8,654) and in Centro (4,666). This is only what is lodged with IEFP: programmers, engineers and office workers are more often recruited through job sites and LinkedIn, so the figures for them are understated.
There is no official list of ‘in-demand’ occupations for the D3 visa: it is for skilled work paying at least 1.5 times the national average salary or at least three IAS, the social support index (€1,611.39 a month in 2026). The authorities do not publish how many euros this ‘average’ comes to, so check with the consulate. Choosing a visa: How to choose a visa to move to Portugal.
Seasonal work
In summer there are not enough people in hotels, restaurants and on the beaches of the Algarve, or for the harvest in the Alentejo and Oeste. At the end of August 2026 IEFP counted 854 vacancies in the Algarve, 13.7% fewer than a year earlier.
A foreigner without the right to work in Portugal needs a seasonal work visa for this kind of job, for up to 270 days. For it you need a contract or a promise of a contract with an employer or a temporary work agency in Portugal (stating the place, hours, pay and paid holiday), accommodation, health insurance and workplace accident insurance. The sectors are agriculture and forestry, fishing, hotels and restaurants, food production, retail, construction and transport. Anyone who has worked on such a visa in the last five years gets a decision within 15 days.
This is a temporary stay visa: it does not lead to a residence permit. If your employer provides accommodation for the season, ask in advance how much will be deducted from your pay for it and have that written into the contract.
Register at an IEFP job centre
Anyone looking for work can register with IEFP (Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profissional); you don't have to be claiming unemployment benefit. So can people who are in work and want to change jobs, or who are looking for a traineeship or a course. The conditions: you are at least 16, and able and willing to work. EU citizens only need a passport or identity card; everyone else needs a document allowing them to live and work in Portugal, such as a residence permit or a jobseeker visa.
You can register online on iefponline or at your nearest job centre (Centro de Emprego). After that they match you with vacancies and invite you on courses, including free Portuguese lessons (details in How to learn Portuguese for free), and on paid traineeships: from October 2026 a trainee's grant starts at €913 (our article ‘IEFP traineeships from €913’).
If you are 15 to 29 and not in education or work, sign up for the Garantia Jovem programme as well: it promises to offer you a job, a course or a traineeship within four months.
“Basically, yes. For example, if you register on the iefponline.iefp.pt website, there's almost always enrolment open for online PLA A1+A2 courses. I finished one of those last year.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkchatporto29.01.2026
“Actually enrolment is open all year round, and as soon as a group fills up they let you know. We, for example, signed up the first time in January and they called us in February; another time we signed up in June and they only called at the end of September, so there's no knowing in advance here. You can just go to your nearest IEFP office and register there, it all goes through them anyway.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkchatporto13.08.2024
Where to look for vacancies
Most people look for jobs on net-empregos.com, which has everything from cleaning to accounting. Others: emprego.sapo.pt for general vacancies; itjobs.pt and landing.jobs for IT; LinkedIn for office jobs, IT and international companies; Indeed, which collects ads from various sites; and iefponline for vacancies lodged with job centres.
Temporary work agencies (empresas de trabalho temporário, ETT) provide a lot of work: you are employed by the agency and sent to a factory, warehouse or call centre. Such an agency needs a licence, which you can check against the IEFP list.
CVs are written in Portuguese, or in English for IT and international companies; Europass is a handy format. How much Portuguese you need depends on the job: in IT and in call centres where the work is in Russian or Ukrainian, English is often enough, but in a shop, a café or anywhere you deal with customers it is hard without Portuguese.
“Russians and Portuguese alike mostly look for work on the site [link] Or keep an eye on here, employers sometimes post vacancies in the group”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkRussosEmPortugal30.06.2025
“Right now on Indeed there are vacancies at Teleperformance and Concentrix for Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking content moderators, online translators. But you need good Eng and the work is mostly onsite and sometimes with night shifts. Portug not needed. Salary around 1230 euros.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkkit_pt27.08.2025
Getting your degree recognised
For ordinary jobs, recognition of your degree is not required; it is up to the employer. You need it if they ask for it, for regulated professions (more on those below) and for public sector jobs. There are three kinds of recognition, all with the same legal standing:
Automatic (reconhecimento automático): only if your degree is on the DGES list; it is that exact degree that gets recognised. It is done by DGES or a public university; at DGES it costs €32.20 and takes up to 30 working days.
Of level (de nível): only the level is recognised, such as bachelor's or master's. Done by public universities, up to 90 working days, the university sets the fee.
Specific (específico): both the level and the subject are recognised by comparing course content. Doctors, nurses and engineers are asked for this one. Also at a public university, up to 90 working days, the university sets the fee.
Applications for all three are made online through a single DGES form. Your degree certificate and transcript must be apostilled and translated into Portuguese. On studying: How to get into university in Portugal.
“It's no hassle at all if you want to get your degree confirmed, do the recunicimento diploma .You take your translated degree with the apostille to DGES and after a while(-+30 days) they give it back with the confirmation of the degree stuck in.Fee 30€ The other option: is reconhecimento específico.That's the long route with confirmation and handing over the whole course programme(that's for doctors, engineers)”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkschoolinportugal28.09.2026
“I recently had my Russian master's degree confirmed via dges.gov.pt. I have a notarised translation into Portuguese, which I uploaded to the portal (as far as I understand, English translations are accepted too), they asked which university I was getting it confirmed for and sent a payment link, and I paid the university directly) Two weeks later the confirmation was ready.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkHigherEducationPortugal19.08.2026
“I'll be joining you soon 😘 DGES made my specialist degree equivalent to a bachelor's. On the whole that's not a big deal either, because I've got recognition of my Candidate of Legal Sciences degree, they made it equivalent to a doctorate. But I'm itching to see it through, yeah.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkHigherEducationPortugal07.10.2026
Regulated professions: doctors, nurses, engineers
Some professions cannot be practised without authorisation: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, engineers, architects, lawyers, psychologists and others. They are overseen by professional bodies (Ordem) or government agencies; the full list is kept by DGERT, the labour relations agency. The procedure is the same: get your degree recognised (usually specific recognition is needed), then register with the professional body under its rules.
A doctor with a non-EU degree needs specific recognition of the degree at a medical school and the Portuguese exam for doctors (Prova de Comunicação Médica); without it the Ordem dos Médicos will not register you. Those who studied medicine in Portuguese do not sit the exam.
For an engineer with a non-EU degree, the Ordem dos Engenheiros has a separate form: you submit your degree and course programme with hours and credits. There are two engineering bodies, the Ordem dos Engenheiros and the Ordem dos Engenheiros Técnicos; which one is yours depends on your field.
Nurses, lawyers and everyone else should check the rules and fees with their professional body before getting their degree recognised: the body may require a particular kind of recognition.
“better to check the requirements with the specific ordem. and for engineers there are two, Ordem dos Engenheiros and Ordem dos Engenheiros Técnicos depending on your field”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkleft4portugal25.08.2024
“It's just that there are different procedures for recognising a degree, some are purely administrative, but in this case, like with medics, there are several written exams, and that sort of turns the expense into ‘another educational service’ The procedure is basically academic. Unlike the simple reconhecimento automático (automatic recognition from a pre-approved list), reconhecimento específico under Decree-Law 66/2018 involves a detailed assessment of the level, length and content of the programme by a committee (jury) of at least three PhD holders.”
Translated from Russian; the original is at the linkmyptaxes02.03.2026
How to check a vacancy and an employer
You don't pay to get a job: a temporary work agency or an employment agency may not charge you anything, not for a vacancy, not for paperwork, not ‘for documents’.
This is expressly forbidden by the law on agencies (Decree-Law 260/2009), and a temporary work agency may not operate without a licence. If an agency calls itself an ETT, look it up on the IEFP list.
An employer may not take your passport or residence card ‘for safekeeping’. If someone is being exploited at work and their documents are taken from them, it may be human trafficking: under the Criminal Code, withholding a victim's documents carries up to three years in prison. In that case call the police on 112.
Russian-language chats are full of ‘vacancies’ without a company name: ‘income €5,000 a month, no experience needed, message me privately’. This is almost always a scam, ranging from upfront payments ‘for paperwork’ to work in another country without a contract. A genuine employer names the company, the position and the pay, and gives you a contract before you start. What to do if they won't give you a contract: Your employer won't give you an employment contract: what to do; if you've been scammed: How to spot fraud in Portugal.
What to bring
- A residence permit, a jobseeker visa or another visa that lets you work; EU citizens need a passport or identity card
- A NIF (tax number), a NISS (Segurança Social number) and a Portuguese IBAN for your salary
- A CV in Portuguese (or in English for IT and international companies), ideally in the Europass format
- Your degree certificate and transcript, apostilled and translated into Portuguese, if your employer or professional body needs it recognised
Where people most often trip up
- Salaries in job ads and in conversation are quoted before deductions: from €1,500 gross you take home about €1,167
- An annual figure in a job offer is divided into 14 payments, not 12, so ask which amount they mean
- INE's average wage for April to June 2026 is €1,835, but it includes bonuses and holiday pay; without them it is €1,342
- A vacancy offering ‘€5,000 a month, message me privately’ without naming the employer is almost always a scam
- You don't need to pay an agency to find you a job: the law forbids charging jobseekers
- You cannot work as a doctor, nurse, engineer or lawyer without getting your degree recognised and joining the professional body (Ordem)
- On 9 October Parliament cut IRS rates for 2026, but the new withholding tables have not come out yet: the take-home figures in this guide are based on the tables in force since January 2026