According to a barometer by the Observatory on Crises and Alternatives, the destruction of employment has mainly affected younger and precarious workers, who have not yet managed to recover from this situation, as most of the jobs created were for workers over 45 years old.

Analysis from the observatory of the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra based on data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), found that during the pandemic, job destruction was differentiated according to sex, affecting 3.4 percent of employed men and 3.8 percent of women, and also according to age, as it alienated 18.6 percent of workers up to 24 years of age and 7 percent of workers aged between 25 and 34 years.

In turn, the observatory indicates, job destruction affected less workers aged between 35 and 44 years (4.5 percent) and people aged between 45 and 54 years (1.2 percent).

By region, most jobs destroyed were located in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Lisbon (32.9 percent), in the Centre (28.9 percent), North (19.6 percent) and the Algarve (9.2 percent).

According to the document, most of the jobs destroyed were in the service sector (76.6 percent of the total), especially in commerce (34.6 percent), accommodation and restaurants (23.5 percent) and public administration (9.9 percent).

The resumption of employment started in the second quarter of 2020, with the progressive reopening of activity after the first general lockdown decided in March to contain the pandemic.

"As a whole, and comparing the figures for the first quarter of 2020 with those for 2021, there was a net creation of 208,900 new jobs, that is, a figure already higher than that recorded in the second quarter of 2019".

For this increase, salaried employment (72.7 percent of the total) contributed, especially permanent contracts (80 percent).

The rise in employment from the second quarter of 2020 took place with a majority of women (51 percent) and with older workers.

About 89 percent of the jobs created corresponded to workers over 45 years old, while young people up to 24 years old corresponded to 6.7 percent of the new net jobs and workers between 25 and 34 years old to 8.6 percent.

"Thus, the jobs of young people up to 34 years old destroyed by the pandemic are far from being replaced by the recovery", conclude the researchers.

These two brackets lost, respectively, 14 percent and 17.9 percent of their employment and recovered by the third quarter of 2021, respectively, 7 percent and 1.6 percent, "without benefiting greatly from the employment recovery".

More than half of the job recovery (54 percent) took place in large companies.

The Lisbon Metropolitan Area has not been able to fully recover the lost jobs, unlike the Centre and North regions, which have seen employment rise.

Among the activities that have fully recovered their job losses are the manufacturing industry, transport and storage and the financial sector.