Portugal fact of the day

Via Felix Salmon, a tale of migration:

In 2006, only 156 Angolan visas were issued to southbound Portuguese, but in 2010, the figure was 23,787.

Felix himself adds:

To put that number in perspective, total emigration from Portugal — to all the countries in the rest of the world combined — ranged between 12,000 and 17,000 a year in the 1980s. Portugal is a very small country, and it hasn’t seen this level of emigration since the 1960s.

One reason: for skilled workers, a job in Angola pays a lot more than a similar job in Portugal: for a civil engineer, we’re talking four times as much, according to one Portuguese entrepreneur in Luanda. And there’s similar demand for skilled workers in fast-growing Brazil, too.