Change in Migrant Share of Population Since 2000: Portugal (UN)

## What this measures

How much the international migrant share of Portugal's population has changed since 2000, in percentage points: each year's share minus the 2000 share, for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2024. A Palanor calculation from the UN's International Migrant Stock 2024. The UN builds this estimate from data on people born abroad (the foreign-born population) (type of data "B").

## Why it matters

Migrants are a large part of the labour force, consumer base and population growth in many countries, and migration is one of the most argued-over subjects in politics. The stock (everyone who has moved and stayed) changes slowly and is the base every flow figure adds to or subtracts from.

## How to read it

Zero in 2000 by construction. Above zero means migrants make up a larger part of the population than in 2000; below zero, a smaller part (because migrants left or died, were outnumbered by population growth, or both). The latest reading is the change from 2000 to 2024. Each point is dated July 1.

## What it does not say

It counts where people were born (or their citizenship), not why they came, how long ago, or whether they have since naturalised: a migrant who became a citizen decades ago is still counted. The UN aligns national censuses, registers and surveys to a common date, so years without a recent census are estimated and are revised with each edition. It is a stock, not the yearly flow of arrivals and departures. A change in percentage points is not a change in the number of migrants: the stock is migration.undesa.stock.prt.

## Source

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). International Migrant Stock 2024. Table 1 (international migrant stock at mid-year) and Table 3 (as a percentage of the total population), both sexes, from https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2024_ims_stock_by_sex_and_destination.xlsx (linked from https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock). Licence: Copyright © 2024 by United Nations, made available under a Creative Commons license CC BY 3.0 IGO (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/). Palanor's copy is unchanged except where this section says otherwise. Palanor subtracts the 2000 share (Table 3) from each later year's share, unrounded, and rounds the result to four decimals; that is the only change. The UN revises the whole series with each edition; the next one replaces these figures back to 1990.