ABSTRACT
The European Union is going through an economic crisis since the year 2007 (Ali 2012; Fernando et al. 2009). Due to this situation, some countries were required to take austerity measures and structural reforms to reduce the budget deficits and the public debt. These measures led to negative impacts on income including reductions in employment. Indeed, unemployment and underemployment are increasing namely in the most vulnerable countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and Ireland (Leahy et al. 2012). In Portugal, employment levels have fallen sharply since 2008. The evolution of employment over the years is presented in Figure 1.
