According to the executive summary of the Employment and Training report, growth was more significant in the active female population and in the 55-64 (6.2 percent) age group.
The Portuguese activity rate remains higher than in the European Union, but in the younger age brackets there has been a systematic decrease from 2008 (40.9 percent) to 2017 (34 percent), while in the EU it has stabilised at around 42 percent .
The inactive population has been decreasing and, in 2017, had 44,000 fewer people than the previous year, and this is the first drop in the last decade.
According to the CRL study, the inactive “no-job seekers” on the mainland totalled about 195,000 people, or 5.6 percent of the total number of inactive people, which decreased by 9.6 percent between 2016 and 2017.
The study shows that the employment volume in 2017 reached the highest level of the last seven years, higher than the figure for 2011 of another 10,700 people.
In 2017, with 143,000 more employed people, employment grew by three times more than the increase observed in 2016 - an additional 54,000 - and increased similarly for both men and women.
But employment growth was not homogeneous among the different age groups, with a decrease in employment in the 35-44 age group and an increase in employment of the younger age groups, aged from 15 to 34, for the first time in the last decade.
In the period under review, on average, the qualifications of the employed population increased.
The employed population with secondary education grew 6.4 percent, the employed population with higher education rose by 3 percent and the population with basic education rose by 1.7 percent.
In 2017, on the Portuguese mainland, 78 percent of the 3,756,400 employees had permanent contracts and 18.4 percent had fixed-term contracts.
The CRL report recalls that in 2017, 438,000 people were unemployed, representing a decrease of 19.3 percent (104,700 fewer people) on the previous year.