The Persistence of Class Inequality: The Portuguese Labour Force at the Turn of the Millennium

The aim of this article is to analyse the structural changes and continuities in Portuguese society over the two decades from 1988-2008. Although modernisation processes have intensified, the country still has a highly polarised social structure. This study included a multiple correspondence analysis and a cluster analysis, using sociological variables collected in a national database that covers all Portuguese companies. Developing this approach made it possible to not only produce different sociological profiles of social and class inequality, but also compare the structural changes in the labour force in these two decades (private sector). The study shows that although the space of social positions was mainly formed by three large socio-professional groups in both 1988 and 2008, their size and social composition changed, reflecting the social and economic trends experienced by Portuguese society in this period.