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WORKING IN SPAIN

Spain’s jobless rate drops due to tourism recovery and less temp work

Spain's unemployment rate fell in the second quarter of 2022, data showed on Thursday, helped by a recovery in the tourism sector and reforms aimed at cutting the use of temporary contracts.

Published: 28 July 2022 11:17 CEST
Spain's jobless rate drops due to tourism recovery and less temp work
The number of job seekers in Spain fell below three million in May for the first time in 15 years.(Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

Unemployment edged down to 12.48 percent in the second quarter from 13.65 percent in the previous three-month period, national statistics institute INE said in a statement.

The number of unemployed people fell by 255,000 in the second quarter to a total of 2.92 million, with the services sector leading job creation, it added.

Hotels, restaurants and bars have taken on more workers as Spain’s key tourism sectors continue to rebound following the end of most pandemic travel restrictions.

The improvement in the jobless rate has also been driven by a labour market reform which came into effect on January 1st and limits the back-to-back use of temporary contracts and makes permanent contracts the rule rather than the exception.

However, there are voices from within some of Spain’s trade unions and the PP opposition party that say that the new system is “perverting the figures” and “dressing up the reality”, as although many of these contracts are labelled as permanent, employees only work during certain months of the year.

READ ALSO: Spain’s labour market buoyed by sharp drop in temporary contracts

The number of job seekers in Spain fell below three million in May for the first time in 15 years.

Economy Minister Nadia Calviño said Tuesday that the improvement in Spain’s labour market is “one of the motors” of the country’s economic growth.

She predicted Spain’s jobless rate would drop to 12.8 percent at the end of the year and to 12.0 percent in 2023.

At the same time, Calviño slashed Spain’s growth forecast due to the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and higher interest rates.

Among western economies, Spain was one of the worst-hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic, with its gross domestic product collapsing by 10.8 percent in 2020, largely due to its heavy dependence on tourism.

Some half-a-million people lost their jobs in 2020 in Spain, which has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

READ ALSO: The downsides of moving to Spain for work

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WORKING IN SPAIN

IN STATS: What jobs do foreigners in Spain do?

What jobs do Italians in Spain tend to do? Do all Chinese nationals run their own shops? How about the Brits? Here is a breakdown of the jobs foreigners in Spain tend to fill.

Published: 30 August 2024 12:08 CEST
IN STATS: What jobs do foreigners in Spain do?

Spain recently reached a record 21 million people workers (out of almost 48 million inhabitants), and foreigners now represent 13.6 percent of this workforce.

Furthermore, the vast majority of new jobs created in Spain are being filled by non-Spaniards.

As often happens in other European countries, migrant workers tend to get the worst paid and most precarious jobs. 

However, the difference in Spain is that even those who are highly skilled are being kept waiting for years to have their qualifications recognised before being able to work in their specialised fields, forcing them to take up lower-paid blue collar work. 

Even many of those who don’t work in regulated professions but were white collar workers in their home countries end up doing jobs in Spain that they are overqualified for.

Despite this unfair situation, hundreds of thousands of other foreigners do make a living in Spain and perhaps find a better life as a result.

According to Social Security figures published in Spain’s leading daily El País, the nine foreign population groups with the largest presence in the country’s workforce each gravitate towards certain kinds of work. 

The ‘word-of-mouth’ effect echoed by their countrymen is believed to largely explain these trends.

Romanians, who number over 500,000 in Spain, have a tendency to work in construction or in factories. 

Moroccan nationals, who make up over 1 million in Spain, favour work in the agricultural sector (33 percent). However, as many as 40 percent of them are unemployed.

As for Venezuelans, numbering 500,000+ in Spain, 23 percent work in hospitality and 17 percent in retail. Three quarters of Venezuelan nationals in the country are working.

READ ALSO: Where are Spain’s self-employed foreign workers from?

It’s a similar situation for Spain’s Colombian population (715,000), as a third of them work in hospitality and retail. 

Ecuadorians were the second foreign population group in Spain in the early 2000s but many left due to the 2008 financial crisis. There are still more than 430,000 of them living in Spain, and 17 percent of this foreign workforce take construction jobs.  

When it comes to Chinese workers, they are almost always self-employed or work for Chinese employers in Spain. Forty-seven percent work in shops and 37 percent in bars or restaurants.

Many Ukrainians, who have a bigger presence in Spain since their country was invaded by Russia, tend to work in construction (17 percent) or domestic work (13 percent). 

Then there’s Spaniards’ neighbours – the Portuguese. Those residing in Spain favour work in retail (15 percent) and transport and storage (13 percent).

Finally, we have Italians, who are migrating to Spain in greater numbers than ever (73,000 more in the last decade). Although many work in hospitality (20 percent) and retail (16 percent), they are the foreign population group with the biggest presence in highly skilled positions: 11 percent in scientific and technical fields and 9 percent in tech and communications. 

Overall though, foreigners are hardly present in the best paid sectors, or those with the best conditions. 

Only 5.1 percent of banking positions are filled by foreigners in Spain, 3.5 percent in energy, 5.5 percent in education and a measly 1.3 percent of civil servant jobs are given to non-Spaniards. 

READ ALSO: Why so many people in Spain ‘dream’ of becoming civil servants

It’s worth noting as well that none of Spain’s English-speaking population groups have a large presence in the Spanish job market. 

Most notable of all is the case of UK nationals, as despite the fact that around 400,000 of them reside in Spain, only 23 percent of them contribute to the country’s social security pot, generally due to the fact that they are retirees with UK pensions.

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