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WORKING IN SPAIN

Record 21 million workers: Spain’s unemployment rate falls as tourism booms

Spain's unemployment rate dropped in the second quarter, official data showed Friday, as a continued tourism boom added jobs in the services sector.

Published: 26 July 2024 11:39 CEST
Record 21 million workers: Spain's unemployment rate falls as tourism booms
People walk outside a government employment office in the centre of Madrid. (Photo by GERARD JULIEN / AFP)

The jobless rate fell to 11.3 percent between March and June in the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy, down from 12.3 percent in the previous three months, national statistics institute INE said in a statement.

The services sector saw the biggest drop in the number of job seekers with nearly 200,000 fewer than in the first quarter but unemployment also dropped in other sectors, including construction, industry and agriculture, it added.

READ ALSO: ‘No longer black sheep’ – Tourism boosts Spain an other ‘Club Med’ economies

The total number of people employed in Spain rose by 434,700 people in the second quarter to hit a new record of 21.68 million.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on X that “Spain is making progress by breaking employment records.

“We continue to work to make this the legislature of full employment. We are going in the right direction,” he posted on the social network.

Spain’s unemployment rate jumped in 2008 as a result of the financial crisis following the bursting of a real estate bubble.

It hit a peak of around 27 percent in early 2013.

The jobless rate has dropped as tourism boomed following the end of Covid travel restrictions and labour reforms were passed to reduce the number of temporary contracts.

Nevertheless, Spain’s unemployment rate is still one of the highest in the eurozone.

Spain, the world’s second most visited country after France, received a record 85 million tourists last year, with the figure expected to hit a new record in 2024.

READ ALSO: The best websites to look for jobs in Spain

Member comments

  1. The drop in unemployment is NOT correlated to tourism at all which comprises around 10% GDP. Rather, Spain is diversifying its economy into other more profitable sectors as they should

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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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