Over 197 million workers surveyed in 2021 on levels of job satisfaction. 43.8% of workers in the EU said they were very satisfied. In Portugal, only 21.6% said the same
Low wages, precariousness, too many hours, authoritarian bosses and professional stagnation. According to Público, which this Monday reveals the main conclusions of the study carried out by Eurostat in 2021, and experts heard by the newspaper, these are the main reasons that make workers in Portugal the most dissatisfied in Europe.
After hearing more than 197 million people about their levels of job satisfaction, the European Union average for those who consider themselves "very satisfied" with what they do professionally was 43.8%. In Portugal, only 21.6% of those polled said the same - the country has the lowest percentage of "very satisfied" workers in the entire EU.
Malta, Latvia and Switzerland, in that order, are the countries in the top three, where more than 65% of respondents were "highly satisfied" with their working conditions. At the other extreme, in addition to Portugal, are Bulgaria and Poland.
When the question was asked the other way around, and focusing on the degree of "dissatisfaction" of workers, the coherence was maintained, but with an exchange of places between Portugal and Bulgaria. If only 5.8% of people surveyed throughout the EU said they were dissatisfied with their jobs, in Portugal, writes the newspaper, this figure is almost double. In Bulgaria, first in the ranking where Italy comes last (with the lowest percentage of dissatisfied workers), the percentage is 11.8%.
Although the survey of workers, carried out by each country's national statistics office, was conducted in a pandemic context, dissatisfaction in Portugal cannot be explained solely by Covid, Elísio Estanque, a researcher at Coimbra University's Center for Social Studies, assured Público: "It was already on the rise since the crisis and the troika period. Even so, the researcher conceded, as "precariousness and instability increased", dissatisfaction at work ended up getting even worse - and "significantly" worse.
This is what the results now published by Eurostat reflect: less than a quarter of workers in Portugal, 21.6%, are satisfied with their professional situation. Most respondents said they were "more or less satisfied" with their work. 10.6% took the negative note and revealed themselves as "dissatisfied.
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