Hospitality industry calls for ‘urgent’ incentives to hiring new staff

  • Lusa
  • 11 November 2021

AHRESP considered it "essential that policies are created to encourage the hiring of staff and employment in this sector as urgently as possible."

The association of hotels, restaurants and similar in Portugal (AHRESP) has warned of the urgent need for policies to encourage the hiring of staff, so that the shortage of human resources does not jeopardise the economic recovery of those activities.

“AHRESP has constantly alerted to the galloping loss of jobs in the accommodation, catering and similar sectors and to the difficulties that our companies have experienced in the processes of recruiting staff,” the association said Thursday in its daily bulletin.

AHRESP considered it “essential that policies are created to encourage the hiring of staff and employment in this sector as urgently as possible, so that the shortage of human resources does not constitute a brake on the economic recovery of our activities, nor jeopardise the competitiveness of Portuguese tourism, one of the main sources of revenue for” the country.

The association recalled the latest data from Portugal Statistics (INE), on employment statistics for the third quarter of the year, which show a decrease of 35,700 workers in accommodation, catering and similar, compared to the same period in 2020, which corresponds to a negative variation of 12.5%, “the second-largest drop recorded among all sectors of activity and which contradicts the general trend of growth in the employed population observed nationally.”

In the case of restaurants and similar, there was a 13.1% drop compared to the third quarter of 2020 and 12,600 jobs were lost between the second and third quarter of this year.

AHRESP pointed out that this is “an unprecedented situation in recent years”, since, due to the seasonality of these activities, “it is common” to see an increase in employment in the catering sector during the summer months.