28.1% of the employment generated in Spain depends, directly or indirectly, on commerce, according to the study Impact of Commerce on the Spanish Economy, carried out by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and which analyzes the evolution of this sector in the last three decades. Thus, the report indicates that around 4.8 million jobs in Spain are linked to this sector, of which 2.8 million are direct employment. Employment has grown in the period analyzed by 31%, from 2.26 million jobs in 1995.
Along these lines, almost a quarter of the economic activity generated in Spain is directly or indirectly linked to this retail sector. It represents 24.3% of the Gross Added Value of the Spanish economy as a whole. The value of the sector’s production has skyrocketed in the last 30 years, with an increase of 200,000 million in the period to contribute 271,000 million and represent 24.8% of the value of the Spanish economy.
The president of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, José Luis Bonet, explained in the press release that it is “a strategic sector due to the intense intersectoral relationships it has” and “it is one of the main engines of the Spanish economy. “not only for its direct contribution to GDP or job creation, but also for its energizing effect on other productive sectors.”
Thus, the data show that “trade plays a fundamental role in the Spanish economy, both in terms of production and the generation of added value and employment.” In relation to the driving role of commerce, each euro produced by the sector represented 1.1 euros of added impact. And along these lines, for every 100 jobs dedicated to this sector, 68 additional jobs were generated in other branches of the national economy.
The branch of activity with the highest value of its production linked to commerce is advertising and market research services, since in 2020 54.1% of its production was determined “by its close relationship with commerce.”
The sector also had “significant importance” in other branches of the economy, such as professional and technical services (38.7% of the value of production was related to trade), storage and auxiliary transportation services (38%). ,security services (35.7%) or printing and reproduction services (34.8%).
The report also analyzes the number of jobs in each sub-branch of trade activity during the historical series (1995-2020), with retail trade being the category with the highest figures, reaching 1.6 million jobs in 2020. (1.7 million in 2019 before the pandemic).
In parallel, wholesale trade is the one that has seen the greatest increase in employment, going from 605,400 full-time equivalent jobs in 1995 to 1.1 million in 2020.
