Portugal: huge rise in leathergoods jobs as footwear holds its own
New figures from national industry body Apiccaps show that Portugal had 1,186 footwear manufacturing companies at the end of 2022. This represents a fall of around 10% compared to the figure ten years earlier.
At the end of last year, the country’s shoe manufacturers employed a combined total of 32,292 workers. This, too, represents a decline, of 6.7%, compared to 2012.
However, the figure for leathergoods manufacturing is more positive. At the end of last year, Portugal had 142 companies making leathergoods, up by 42% compared to 2012.
These companies were sustaining 3,324 jobs at the end of 2022, a huge increase of 220% compared to 2012.
Similarly, footwear component manufacturers numbered 273 at the end of last year, up by 5.8% over the ten-year period. In the course of those ten years, the number of jobs in footwear component factories increased by 20% to reach 5,114.
