This paper offers a two decades´ (1985-2007) perspective of employer enterprises´ demography dynamics in the Portuguese region of the Algarve. Departing from the NUTII regional disaggregation, this region´s firm demography is further broken down by sector, size and growth intensity, during the analysis of firm creation, employment, high-growth firms, longevity and survival probability. By 2007, only three NUTII regions displayed a rate of firm creation above the national average, with Algarve being the region in the country with the highest rate of firm creation, after the year 2000. Algarve also displays the highest rate of growth of employer enterprises, suffering however from considerable firm turbulence due to its high share of SME. These findings are related to the regional specialization model, as Algarve´s firms have been shown to be increasingly concentrated in the services and construction sectors throughout the period.
