How a New Type of Immigration Is Radically Changing Portugal’s Economy

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Portuguese person here. I just want to add that the "affordable cost of living" is a myth (yes, completely). Its only "affordable" or "great" if you get salaries from much richer countries like Germany, The UK and the US. This is why so many of the workers are remote. If you actually get an average Portuguese salary, the cost of living is brutal and one of the worst in Europe after tax as well. The flood of much richer people coming to get salaries from elsewhere but enjoy our relative prices has made it so the average portuguese person simply can not live on their own with any quality superior to "horrible". My mother is a surgeon, she's past the age of doing night shifts, still does them yet struggles to take care of me (uni student) and my little brother (14) without needing physical and financial help from my almost 80 year old grandmother. Most people can expect to live with their parents up until their LATE THIRTIES and even when they leave the house, quality is sub-par at best more often than not. (Edit: more than 50% of my mother's wage gets discounted in taxes) This gets worse when you consider the non-western migration. Portuguese people get their hopes stolen by people who drive up prices due to their wealth, and then we get migration from countries full of people willing to work jobs for salaries and conditions much lower than what an average person would find reasonable. I know a very hard working mechanic who works 10 hours a day (sometimes 13) with tools that wouldn't pass inspection in nearby Spain only to get a pre--tax salary that can't be described as anything other than "average" (given the national context). Please stop with this language that even implies that our cost of living is somehow fantastic. Its one of the worst in Europe for people who live here. An 18 year old retail worker in the US will pocket more money after tax than I will with my master's degree in the area I will work in. I spend more (relative to the money i have) on groceries than my financial equivalent does in the average UK city. Living here is brutal, financially speaking. I will NEVER be able to afford even RENT or a house/apartment in a city on my salary, even if I got married to someone slightly better off than me. Much less actually afford to buy a home of my own. I'm luckier, since I don't intend to live anywhere that is described as anything larger than a "town", but I'm the odd one out and even still the cost to quality ratio is not looking good.

Portugal is in a unique situation where it gets alot of digital nomads and third world immigration whilst having low salaries for its cost of living. The nomads raise the prices of goods and housing, and the other immigrants ensure that wages are kept low, literally tugging the population on both sides and suffocating the average citizen

A minumum wage worker in the netherlands would classify as medium-high to high income here in Portugal. Meanwhile rent prices in Lisbon are the same as in Amsterdam. How does this make any sense?

Nice to see Portugal featured. Government here doesn’t understand that they need to lower taxes for locals, not foreigners

I live in Porto. My parents have a small appartment in the center of the city. I had to move to the periphery for my first appartment (still inside Porto's metropolitan area) I am a software engineer. I have a decent salary, specially compared to the rest of the Portuguese population, and I still can't afford any appartment in the area I grew up in.

You guys have no idea how incredibly expensive Lisbon and Porto in Portugal have become in the space of just 7-8 years, to the point it's stupid. And with the gentrification of tourists and digital nomads, it seems like a totally different city / place to live compared with what was some years ago. My friends that still live there say they have no chance than to leave the country because they can't afford it anymore. I had to leave it as well so I could afford to just live by myself.

I live in Portugal. It's almost impossible for locals to afford normal life...

As a spaniard this is not new. The whole south of Europe is suffering the same kind of problem. That is why cities like Barcelona are banning Airbnb and other similar services, because of their impact in the housing market. I think we europeans should reconsider the effects of over-tourism and digital nomads for the local populations and act accordingly on a personal level. Choose hotels before airbnbs, choose destinations with sustainable tourism policies in place, choose places that are not overcrowded. Travelling somewhere "cheap" might look like a great idea until you start to think why actually that place is so "cheap".

The fact is that All migration to Portugal is damaging now, there's no houses, we've been thrown out of homes because of the digital nomads and at the same time cheap labor from the third world keeps wages extremely down because the average portuguese now has to compete with people who take ANY wage, driving wages down

"affordable cost of living" LOL, here in portugal cost of living is only really affordable if you get paid other countries salaries or don't need to pay rent because housing is VERY EXPENSIVE

It's actually quite impressive how much damage Air b&b has done to cities around the world.

It's happening everywhere. Try buying a home in Paris, London, Rome, Copenhagen...or most of the UK, or France or anywhere. Homes are now a commodity first, a place to live a poor second. There's rich folk with asset portfolios full of homes. They don't care that means homes are not affordable, only that their 'stock' goes up in value. They suck up new builds, and grab land. That's the truth. Unless something is done to stop them or curb their activity things will get worse. Taxing non domicile owners is one way of limiting what they can get out of it.

I'm from Portugal and I can say that everything is costly and the government doesn't care about us Portuguese; they do nothing to help.

You documentary is not part, but missed a BIG part of the problem. Digital Nomads is one, the NRH (low tax benefits for foreigns) is another, and the big elephant in the room that you missed, Portugal relaxed the rules in 2018 for non skill workers, and we have been flooded with people from India/Paquistan, they can work or stay here for a few years and then get a Portuguese passport (low language requirements) and from there you can go legal to the EU. its about 100k new people per year. it is funny that you did a video about Portugal immigration and left out the number one factor that is changing Portugal society.

This confirms the situation and reason why I left Portugal in 2011. Still the same.

It’s not only Airbnb, but real estate moguls who buy up buildings in all European cities to manipulate the housing prices. If you walk in any bigger city in Europe and just look up in the center of the city, most of the flats are abandoned and standing empty. We have to regulate the amount of properties that a person/company/hedge fund can purchase…

How is it possible that the small influx of nomads using a visa scheme started in 2022 is blamed for a price increase trend which started around 2015? How does it make any sense? Feels more like deep-rooted problems (like what most of the world is experiencing now) but it's easy to get angry at a small number of people who make more money than us.

We have the same problem in Northern Spain as neighbours of Portugal, with exaggerated quantities of "digital nomads" or skilled migrants. It is just unbearable. Prices as expensive as the USA for a house and salaries as Bulgaria or Romania. I think they are actually creating some kind of new slavery with this. It is very rare to earn more than 1000€/month in Northern Spain or Portugal. The prices are TRIPLE than a couple of years ago, the same salary for locals. If you stay, it's to work for misery for the rich people that come with better salaries, now they only hire locals as waiters. The super cool industry is mostly for native English speakers... I don't see tons of opportunities for Portuguese people. Renting an apartment for 1000€ or buying a house for 300.000€ (new average) is just impossible for locals, maybe a doctor or something like that but still, far from the reality. Normal people earn about 1000€ as I said, with luck. Also in several cases it is needed to earn triple the monthly payment of your rent or mortgage. Literally, that put thousands of people in the street. Just very unfair. If you ask me, they are creating ghettos where Portuguese people are becoming cheap service for (mostly white) rich people. Unbelievable.

Brother, you don't always hit the mark. Still I always loved videos and understand it comes with territory. But this is horrible. You missed so much and the situation is so dysfunctional. Our banking system has constant failures, growth is stagnant for years. The migration waves out of Portugal from people who study there. The influx of people - yikes man.