Spain Hits Record 22.4 Million Workers, Driven by Migrant Employment

Spain’s labor market reached a new all-time high in June, surpassing 22.4 million workers registered with the Social Security system. The country added 128,500 new affiliates compared to May, marking the third-best June this century. The surge was largely fueled by foreign workers, who accounted for more than half of the new jobs: 86,630 people, or 67% of the total increase. This comes during a government-led extraordinary regularization process for migrants, which ended on June 30 with over 1.2 million applications. The Ministry of Social Security reported that the regularization directly added nearly 160,000 workers to the system by the end of June. This pushed the number of foreign affiliates to a record 3,446,178, representing 15% of all workers. “Never in history have there been so many workers registered,” said the Ministry, highlighting record levels among young people, women, men, self-employed workers, and foreign workers. Spain now leads Europe in job creation. In the first quarter of the year, more than half of all new jobs in the European Union were created in Spain. The June data also showed strong year-on-year growth of 2.8%, the highest in three years, with over 605,200 jobs created in the last 12 months. Even after adjusting for seasonal effects, the economy added 92,500 jobs—a very high number for this series. **Unemployment Drops Below 2.3 Million** Unemployment fell by 28,700 people in June, a smaller drop than usual but enough to push the total number of jobless below 2.3 million for the first time since January 2008, at the start of the Great Recession. The total now stands at 2,291,982. The Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, attributed the smaller monthly decline to two factors: the shrinking pool of unemployed people, which makes further reductions harder, and lower job turnover due to the 2021 labor reform, which has reduced temporary contracts. Regarding the impact of the migrant regularization on unemployment figures, Pérez Rey said it was “too early” to see effects, and any impact would be “insignificant,” less than 1%. In June, over 1.6 million contracts were signed, with 41% being permanent. Officials from both the Employment and Social Security departments emphasized that the reduction in temporary employment marks a “structural change” in Spain’s labor market, moving toward higher-quality jobs even amid seasonal summer hiring and global uncertainties like the Iran conflict.