The Ministry of Labour revealed that 5,343 Portuguese people registered with British social security between October 2022 and September 2023, 40.8% less than in the previous 12 months (9,024).

Social security registration, which is mandatory to be able to work or receive social support in the country, is a way of calculating demographic flows.

The decline has been accentuating since 2020, following the Covid-19 pandemic and the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU).

Although the British Government recorded 1.1 million new registrations of non-British adult foreign citizens on Social Security, only 110,000 were EU citizens (10%), a drop of 50 percentage points compared to September 2019.

The latest data on the European Union Citizens Registration System [EU Settlement Scheme, EUSS] has also been released, which counted 504,170 applications by Portuguese citizens until September 30, 2023, to obtain a residence permit.

Of these, 273,980 Portuguese received a permanent residence title [settled status], 170,110 a provisional title [pre-settled status] and 52,800 had their processes rejected or invalidated.

The number of applications is not equivalent to the number of Portuguese residents in the United Kingdom, estimated at around 450 thousand, as some of the applications are repeated.