This is an increase from 7.6 percent the year before. The level has risen from 3.8 percent in 2014, a significant improvement over time.

The most significant increase in share of adults employed in brain business jobs has occurred in Cyprus, where the share has increased by fully 136 percent between 2014 and 2025. Portugal is second, with 105 percent increase. The rate has nearly doubled in Bulgaria (99 percent increase), Lithuania (90 percent) and Croatia (89 percent). Lowest rate of increase is in high-cost Luxembourg (2 percent increase), followed by Iceland (6 percent).

This is the finding of the geography of Europe’s brain business jobs index, produced by the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR), with support from Nordic Capital. Amongst the total population of the Portugal, 9.1 percent are engineers and scientists. A comparison of European nations shows that a strong link exists between expert density and brain business jobs density. Some countries outperform in terms of brain business jobs, in relation to their expert density, while some overperform. Portugal underperforms, having a 0.3 percentage points lower share of adults in brain business jobs, in relation to how much would be predicted by the expert density of the nation.

“Portugal and the Lisbon region in particular, are hubs of brain business jobs growth. Portugal can continue this path by pursuing further growth-oriented reforms of taxation and business regulation”, says Nima Sanandaji, CEO of ECEPR.

In the Lisbon region 14.2 percent of the adults are employed in brain business jobs. The Norte region also has a high share of brain business jobs per capita, 6.6 percent.

Strong in head offices and design

Portugal has particular relative strengths in head office and management, where nearly 108 800 are employed. The country has also recently developed a relatively strong design and other creative professions sector, with 42 400 employees.

Klas Tikkanen, COO of Nordic Capital Advisors, emphasized the importance of combining high-quality education with favorable tax and regulatory environments, stating, “Having many engineers and scientists in the population is closely linked to the share of advanced jobs. We also continue to see a trend in Europe where countries with the fastest growth in brain business jobs tend to have lower tax levels relative to GDP. Nations need to combine talent supply with competitive tax burdens, in order to grow with knowledge-intensive jobs.”

Fostering high-value-creating jobs remains important for the regional labor markets of Europe. Each percentage point higher share of the population of European regions employed in brain business jobs is linked to 0.24 percentage points lower regional unemployment. This means that in a region where 10 percentage points more of the population is employed in brain business jobs, the average unemployment is 2.4 percent lower, compared to the typical European region.