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Foreign workers in Spain hit a record high, and their contribution to the economy keeps growing
More than 3.5 million foreign nationals are now registered with Social Security, representing nearly 16% of the entire workforce
The number of foreign workers registered with Social Security in Spain reached an all-time high in August, with 3,551,759 contributors, an increase of almost 40,000 on the previous month alone. In annual terms, that represents a rise of 482,490 people, a year-on-year growth rate of 15.7%, more than 12 percentage points above the overall growth in total workforce affiliation, which stood at 3.1%.Foreign workers now account for 15.9% of all Social Security contributors in Spain, a share that has grown steadily and shows no sign of plateauing. A report published earlier this year explored what Spain's economy would look like with significantly fewer immigrants, and the picture it painted was a stark one. These latest figures add further weight to that argument.
Morocco tops the list of nationalities by number of contributors at 407,350, followed by Colombia at 368,901, Romania at 336,681 and Venezuela at 248,550. Around 27% of all foreign workers come from other EU member states. Of the total 3.55 million, just over 2 million are men and around 1.5 million are women, with women representing nearly 43% of all foreign workers registered in Spain.
The sectors where foreign workers are most heavily represented tell their own story about how the Spanish economy functions. In hospitality, they account for a third of all workers. In agriculture the figure is 28.1%, in construction 27% and in transport more than 18%. Foreign self-employed workers have also hit a record, with 537,660 registered at the end of August, a 10.3% increase on August 2023. In Murcia specifically, eight out of ten new self-employed workers registered over the past four years have been foreign nationals, a local illustration of the national trend.
Since the extraordinary worker regularisation process was activated at the end of April, 337,917 foreign nationals have registered with Social Security through that route, the majority in the General Scheme and 5% as self-employed.
One figure stands out particularly. Since the labour reform came into force, more than half of all new jobs created have gone to foreign workers, with the share estimated at 50.9%. The permanent contract rate among foreign workers now sits at 85.9%, up from 58.9% in the years before the reform. The temporary employment rate among foreign workers stands at 14.1%, barely above the 13.2% recorded for the general population, a detail that quietly challenges the assumption that migrant workers are predominantly stuck in precarious short-term employment.
Since June 2022, the cumulative increase in foreign workers registered in Spain has exceeded 1.2 million. The direction of travel is clear.
Image: AI generated
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