Madeira recorded, in 2022, very positive indicators in the area of tourism, but maintained high levels of unemployment and poverty, in addition to the trend towards a marked aging of its population, according to official data collected by Pordata.
As part of the elections taking place next Sunday for the Madeiran Legislative Assembly, Pordata, the statistical base of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, today presented a demographic, political and economic portrait of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM), based on data of official entities, with emphasis on the National Statistics Institute (INE).
The archipelago has been governed by the PPD/PSD since 1976, a party that, for the first time since free elections, did not obtain an absolute majority in the regional legislatures in 2019.
Of the 47 possible mandates, the PPD/PSD obtained 21 and governs in coalition with the CDS-PP (three deputies), with the PS obtaining 19, the JPP three, and the PCP-PEV one.
In these last elections, the PSD obtained 40.3% of the votes, with 5,241 more votes than the PS (36.6%), having obtained a majority in Calheta, São Vicente and Ponta do Sol.
The PS was the party with the most votes in Porto Santo, Machico, Funchal and Santa Cruz.
The abstention rate was 44.5%, the second highest ever (the highest had been 50.3% in the 2015 elections, when Alberto João Jardim left the leadership of the PSD in the region).
According to Pordata, the ‘per capita’ wealth produced in RAM was, in 2021 (latest available data), lower than the national average by 5.6% and the European Union average by 30.5%, despite being the fourth largest region of the country with the highest GDP ‘per capita’, after the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, Algarve and Alentejo.
However, contrary to what happens at national level, “the balance of goods of companies in RAM is positive, that is, companies in the region export more than they import”, a result supported by the municipalities of Funchal and Porto Moniz.
Construction represented 14.7% of the value generated by companies in RAM (8% nationally) in 2022 and accommodation and restaurants represented 13.4%, “9.3 percentage points more than the national average”.
In 2022, Madeira recorded 8.4 million tourist overnight stays, the highest figure ever and a growth of 12.4% compared to 2019, corresponding to 33 tourist overnight stays per inhabitant (the national average is seven overnight stays per resident).
That year, the archipelago had 390 tourist accommodations, which represented 5.5% of the total number of tourist accommodations nationwide.
Last year, inflation in the autonomous region was 6.9%, slightly lower than the national average (7.8%). It was lower in goods such as housing, water, electricity and gas (in Madeira inflation for these goods was 4.6% while nationally it was 12.8%), but high in restaurants and hotels (it reached 15.1 % when at national level it was 11.7%).
253 thousand people live in RAM, of which 53% are women and 47% are men.
The proportion of young people and children under 15 years of age is lower than the national average and decreased by 27% in a decade, while the elderly population increased and all municipalities in the region now had more elderly people than young people.
One in four Madeirans lived at risk of poverty (with less than 551 euros per month) and around 6,500 people received the Social Insertion Income (2.9% of the resident population, in line with national values), of which 53% were women, 35% were under 25 and 27% were 55 or over.
The Madeiran unemployment rate was higher than the national average (in 2022 there were 9,200 unemployed people, representing a rate of 7%, above the 6% national rate), although this was the lowest unemployment rate since 2011.
The illiteracy rate in the region, at 4.5%, is the second highest in the country (the first, at 5%, belongs to Alentejo, compared to the national average, at 3.1%) and the school dropout rate (10.6%) is also higher than the national average (5.9%).
Education levels are lower than the national average: 17.5% have higher education (24.5% in the entire territory) and 21.7% of the population have a maximum of four years of schooling (versus 19 % a Nacional level).
Despite being older, the Madeiran population has been growing slightly since 2020, due to the increase in immigrants (mainly from Venezuela, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Germany): 4.7% of the population residing in RAM is foreign, with highlighting the municipalities of Calheta and Porto Santo, where more than 8% of residents are foreigners.