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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