How many people does one 24/7 position need in Portugal?

6 people. One position staffed every hour of the year is 8,766 hours, and one full-time employee in Portugal is actually available for about 1,615 of them once 54 days of holidays, leave, sickness and training come out. That is a relief factor of 5.43, which rounds up to 6 whole people.

What is a relief factor?

The number of employees needed to keep one position filled continuously, once the days nobody works are taken out. It is coverage hours divided by the hours one employee is genuinely available. In Portugal that is 8,766 divided by 1,615, or 5.43. A factor below the headcount you actually employ means the post runs on overtime.

Why is a flat 25 percent absence buffer not enough for Portugal?

Because it undershoots here. A raw hours calculation gives 4.31 employees, and adding a flat quarter takes that to 5.38, against a derived answer of 5.43. The rule of thumb is 0.9 percent low, because Portugal loses more days to leave and sickness than a quarter of the year covers.

Does the statutory leave minimum reflect what employers actually give in Portugal?

It is a floor, not a norm. This page computes on the statutory minimum of 22 working days because that is the figure the law fixes and a source can be attached to. Most employers sit above it, and the sensitivity table on this page shows what the relief factor becomes at more generous entitlements, so a planner can find their own contract rather than taking the floor as the answer.

How Many Employees Does One 24/7 Post Need in Portugal?

Relief factor5.43

People per post6

Holding one position every hour of 2026 in Portugal takes 8,766 staffed hours. One full-time employee is genuinely available for about 1,615 of them, so the post needs 5.43 employees, which is 6 whole people.

One ring per person, one year each

Each ring is one employee's year, broken wherever they are on holiday, on leave, or off sick. No single ring closes, which is the whole problem: one person cannot hold a post that never stops.

Stack 6 of them and the picture closes. Trace any line out from the center and it crosses at least one solid arc, so every hour of 2026 has somebody on it. That is the relief factor, drawn rather than asserted.

Where the number comes from

1
Staffing one position 168 hours a week comes to 8,766 hours across the year.
2
Portugal has 261 weekdays in the year, the starting point for one employee.
3
Take out 9 public holidays that fall on a weekday, 22 days of statutory paid leave, 20 days of average sickness absence, and 3 days of training: 54 days lost.
4
That leaves 207 working days per employee, and at a 39-hour week that is 7.8 hours a day, so 1,615 available hours a year.
5
8,766 coverage hours divided by 1,615 available hours is a relief factor of 5.43, so the post needs 6 people.

Working days lost per employee, 2026
Weekdays in the year	261
Public holidays on a weekday	−9
Statutory paid annual leave	−22
Average sickness absence	−20
Training and onboarding (assumed)	−3
Working days available	207
At 7.8 hours a day	1,615 hours

Paid public holidays are a statutory entitlement in Portugal, so they sit on top of annual leave and are deducted separately here.

The training allowance of 3 days is a planning assumption rather than a sourced statistic, and it is deliberately low. Every other figure on this page carries a source. If your operation runs heavy certification cycles, raise it and the relief factor rises with it.

What the usual rule of thumb gets wrong here

The common shortcut is to divide coverage hours by contracted hours and add a quarter for absence. In Portugal that gives 5.38 against a derived answer of 5.43, so the shortcut is low by 0.9 percent. A flat buffer travels badly because the things it stands in for, statutory leave and the length of the contracted week, are set nationally.

Hours only4.31

Nobody ever away. Not a real answer.

Plus a flat 25%5.38

The usual shortcut, under by 0.9%.

Derived5.43

From Portugal's own leave, hours, and absence.

Other coverage shapes

The same availability figure answers any coverage window. Only the hours the post must be staffed change.

Coverage	Hours a week	Relief factor	People
Round the clock, every day	168	5.43	6
Round the clock, weekdays only	120	3.88	4
Two shifts, every day	112	3.62	4
Extended day, weekdays only	60	1.94	2

If your contract is more generous

22 days is the statutory floor in Portugal, and most employers sit above it. Every extra week of leave is another week the post has to be covered by somebody else.

Annual leave	Relief factor	People per post
22 daysstatutory floor	5.43	6
25 days	5.51	6
28 days	5.59	6
30 days	5.65	6
33 days	5.73	6

The inputs, and what they do not say

How the leave figure is defined

Stated in law as working days: Código do Trabalho art. 238(1) sets a minimum of 22 "dias úteis", and art. 238(2) defines dias úteis as Monday to Friday excluding public holidays, so the 22 days already exclude holidays and need no conversion.

Why the contracted week is not the legal maximum

This page divides by a 39-hour week, the typical full-time contract in Portugal, not by the 40-hour statutory figure. That larger number is a legal ceiling on how much someone may be asked to work, not a description of what a full-time employee is contracted for, and using it as capacity would understate the headcount a post needs.

What these figures cannot be used for

Not a ranking. The sickness figure here comes from a national statistical source, while other countries in this library use the OECD labour force survey. Those systems define absence differently, and self-reported survey figures undercount short spells that administrative records capture. Each number is the best available answer for planning inside its own country, and the gap between any two of them is partly a gap between statistical methods rather than between workforces.

A relief factor also says nothing about whether a roster is legal or humane. It sets how many people the post needs across a year; it does not check rest periods between shifts, consecutive nights, or weekend distribution. Those constraints decide whether the pattern you build on top of this headcount is one anybody can actually work.

Research notes on Portugal

LEAVE, THE PORTUGAL TRAP: art. 238(2) is explicit that public holidays are not counted as dias úteis, so 22 working days sit on top of the 13 mandatory national holidays listed in art. 234 (1 Jan, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, 25 Apr, 1 May, Corpus Christi, 10 Jun, 15 Aug, 5 Oct, 1 Nov, 1/8/25 Dec), plus the two optional holidays in art. 235 (Carnival Tuesday and the municipal holiday). Never add holidays into the 22. Two further wrinkles: many HR summaries still quote 25 days, which came from the old art. 238(3) bonus of up to 3 extra days for low absenteeism, revoked by Lei 23/2012 and never restored (the consolidated text now shows n.4 as "Revogado"); 25 days exists only in some collective agreements such as banking, not as a statutory floor. And art. 238(3) as it now reads says that where a worker's rest days fall on weekdays, non-holiday Saturdays and Sundays are counted in place of them, so shift workers still get 22 days but the days consumed are different ones.

HOURS: 40 is the normal weekly maximum (art. 203(1), 8h/day and 40h/week). Do not confuse it with art. 211, which caps AVERAGE weekly hours including overtime at 48 over a 4-month reference period (up to 12 months by collective agreement). Art. 203(4) lets collective agreements reduce the 40 without cutting pay, which is why the collectively agreed average is below it.

COLLECTIVE 39 vs REALITY: Eurofound puts Portugal's average collectively agreed normal week at 39.0 for 2024 (tied with Ireland, well above the EU27 average of 38.2). But Eurostat LFS shows full-time employees in Portugal usually work 40.5 hours (2025, lfsa_ewhun2), i.e. above the statutory 40. So 39 describes what agreements say, not what people work. If the calculator uses collectiveWeeklyHours to size real coverage, 39 will understate hours actually delivered; a planner sizing contracts should use 39, a planner sizing capacity should use 40.

SICKNESS, READ THE CONVERSION: OECD Health Statistics publishes this for Portugal as 4.0 weeks per year per full-time dependent employee (2025; 4.2 in 2024, 4.1 in 2023). Converted on a 5-day week: 4.0 x 5 = 20.0 working days. Two caveats that matter. First, OECD derives it from the EU-LFS (hours absent / usual weekly hours x 52) and then MULTIPLIES BY 2 to correct for an estimated 50% underreporting in labour force surveys versus health surveys, so the raw self-reported figure behind this is roughly 10 days and 20 is a modelled number. Second, it covers full-time employees only and includes long-term sick leave, which in Portugal is long and generously covered, so it runs well above the short-term absence figures HR absence trackers report. It is comparable across countries but is not a short-term-absence buffer.

RESIDUAL UNCERTAINTY: the consolidated Código do Trabalho I checked (Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, the Ministério Público legal database) is the 25th version, current to Lei n.º 32/2025 of 27/03. Arts. 203 and 238 are unchanged there from the original 2009 text apart from the Lei 23/2012 edits to 238. I could not independently confirm that no 2026 amendment has since touched them, because Diário da República's consolidated site is a JavaScript app that returns no readable text to automated fetches and my search budget ran out. The 40-hour week and the 22-day floor have been stable since 2009, so the risk is low, but re-check before a legally sensitive use. Also note the 2025 OECD observation may be revised; if you prefer a settled year, 2024 is 4.2 weeks = 21 days.

Sources

Every figure above except the training allowance was checked against one of these.

statutoryWeeklyHours 40 and statutoryAnnualLeaveDays 22: Código do Trabalho art. 203(1) 'O período normal de trabalho não pode exceder oito horas por dia e quarenta horas por semana'; art. 238(1) 'O período anual de férias tem a duração mínima de 22 dias úteis'; art. 238(2) defines dias úteis as Mon-Fri excluding public holidays. Original enacted text, Diário da República 1.ª série n.º 30.
Diário da República (Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda), Lei n.º 7/2009 de 12 de fevereiro2009
Consolidated current text confirming 40h/week still stands unamended (art. 203), that the leave minimum is still 22 dias úteis with the low-absence bonus in old art. 238(3) now revoked, that art. 211 caps average weekly hours including overtime at 48, and that art. 234 lists 13 mandatory public holidays. 25th version, current to Lei n.º 32/2025 of 27/03.
Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa (Ministério Público), base de dados de legislação2025
collectiveWeeklyHours 39.0 for Portugal (shown jointly with Ireland at 39; EU27 average 38.2, EU14 37.7). Data item published 6 October 2025, source Network of Eurofound Correspondents.
Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions)2024
Underlying Eurofound chart data actually read to obtain the 39.0 value (the data-catalogue page blocks automated fetches; this is the chart it embeds, chart ID EF24053_F2, with the full country CSV inline).
Eurofound (static chart host)2024
sicknessDaysPerYear: Portugal 4.0 weeks of sickness absence per year per person, full-time dependent employees, 2025 (2024: 4.2; 2023: 4.1). Dataflow DSD_HEALTH_STAT@DF_AWDI 'Sickness absences from work', measure WKAB, unit 'Weeks per year per person'. Converted 4.0 x 5 working days = 20 days.
OECD Health Statistics (SDMX API)2025
Methodology behind the sickness figure: 'The number of weeks of sickness absence is calculated as the number of hours absent relative to usual weekly hours, multiplied by 52 weeks. These estimates are then multiplied by a factor of 2 to correct for an estimated 50% underreporting'. Source is EU-LFS; covers full- and part-week absences of full-time dependent employees.
OECD Health Statistics 2025, Definitions, Sources and Methods2025
Corroboration that actual hours exceed the collectively agreed 39: average usual weekly hours in main job, full-time employees, Portugal = 40.5 (2025); 40.6 in 2022-2024. Dataset lfsa_ewhun2.
Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey2025

Common questions

How many people does one 24/7 position need in Portugal?: 6 people. One position staffed every hour of the year is 8,766 hours, and one full-time employee in Portugal is actually available for about 1,615 of them once 54 days of holidays, leave, sickness and training come out. That is a relief factor of 5.43, which rounds up to 6 whole people.
What is a relief factor?: The number of employees needed to keep one position filled continuously, once the days nobody works are taken out. It is coverage hours divided by the hours one employee is genuinely available. In Portugal that is 8,766 divided by 1,615, or 5.43. A factor below the headcount you actually employ means the post runs on overtime.
Why is a flat 25 percent absence buffer not enough for Portugal?: Because it undershoots here. A raw hours calculation gives 4.31 employees, and adding a flat quarter takes that to 5.38, against a derived answer of 5.43. The rule of thumb is 0.9 percent low, because Portugal loses more days to leave and sickness than a quarter of the year covers.
Does the statutory leave minimum reflect what employers actually give in Portugal?: It is a floor, not a norm. This page computes on the statutory minimum of 22 working days because that is the figure the law fixes and a source can be attached to. Most employers sit above it, and the sensitivity table on this page shows what the relief factor becomes at more generous entitlements, so a planner can find their own contract rather than taking the floor as the answer.