Public employment declines slightly, while the regional workforce remains comparatively young, highly educated and predominantly female
Public employment in the Azores Regional Administration declined slightly over the past year, with 19,672 jobs recorded at the end of June 2026, according to the latest figures from Portugal’s Directorate-General for Administration and Public Employment (DGAEP). The total represents 52 fewer positions than in June 2025, a year-on-year decrease of 0.3%.
The decline becomes somewhat more noticeable when compared with the previous quarter. In March, the Regional Administration employed 19,767 people, meaning that 95 positions disappeared over the following three months, a reduction of approximately 0.5%.
The Azorean trend contrasts with public employment nationally. Across Portugal, the number of public-sector jobs increased by 1% over the same period, representing an additional 7,390 positions, with growth concentrated primarily in the Central and Local administrations. The regional administrations of both the Azores and Madeira moved in the opposite direction.
The longer historical perspective, however, tells a more complex story. In December 2011, when the current DGAEP statistical series began, the Azores Regional Administration had 17,728 jobs. Despite the latest decline, there are now 1,944 more positions than there were at that time—an increase of approximately 11% over nearly fifteen years.
The composition of the workforce is equally revealing. Women accounted for 66% of all Regional Administration employees in June 2026, giving the Azorean public sector a particularly strong female presence. Educational attainment is also relatively high. At the end of 2025, 54.8% of employees held a higher-education qualification, including bachelor’s, undergraduate, master’s or doctoral degrees. Of the 19,628 positions recorded at that time, 10,756 were occupied by workers with higher education.
The age profile offers another important perspective. At the end of 2025, 34.8% of employees were under the age of 45. Workers between 45 and 54 represented 33.3% of the workforce, while another 27.3% were between 55 and 64. Only 4.6% were aged 65 or older. Although the proportion of younger employees has fallen from 36.8% in 2024, the Azorean Regional Administration continues to have a younger workforce than several other areas of Portuguese public administration.
This difference is particularly evident among senior personnel. The average age of managers in the Azores Regional Administration stood at 48.5 years at the end of 2025—the lowest among the public-administration subsectors examined by DGAEP. By comparison, the national average was 51.8 years.
Employment of people with disabilities has remained comparatively stable. At the end of 2025, the Regional Administration employed 359 people with a permanent disability of at least 60%, two more than a year earlier. Of these employees, 225 were women and 134 were men.
There is, however, an important gap in the statistical portrait of the Azorean public sector. DGAEP continues to report that employment figures for non-financial public companies owned by the Azores Regional Administration are unavailable because those entities have failed to report the required information to the State Organization Information System (SIOE). The absence extends across 2023, 2024 and 2025.
That omission means the 19,672 positions reported for June should not be interpreted as representing the entirety of regional public-sector employment. The Regional Administration and publicly owned companies belong to different statistical categories, and the lack of information on the latter leaves part of the broader picture unseen.
The newest figures therefore reveal two simultaneous realities. In the immediate term, employment within the Azores Regional Administration is contracting slightly, even as public employment grows nationally. Over the longer term, however, the regional administration remains considerably larger than it was in 2011.
Beyond the headline loss of 52 jobs, the statistics portray a public administration undergoing gradual demographic change: predominantly female, still comparatively young, and with more than half of its workforce holding higher-education qualifications. The greater challenge may ultimately be not simply how many people work for the Regional Administration, but whether the Azores can maintain a qualified and generationally balanced public workforce while ensuring that the full dimensions of regional public employment are transparently reported.
Based on a story in Diário dos Açores-Paulo Viveiros, director. Photo from DA