Barcelona leads technological employment among the ten largest cities in Spain, according to the Technological Employment Map prepared by the Cotec foundation. The city has 11.8% of those employed working in this area, ahead of Madrid (9.8%), a city followed by Zaragoza, Seville, Malaga and Valencia, well below.
Barcelona’s leadership in technological employment responds to the roots of its digital ecosystem, which began its activity two decades ago thanks to the promotion of scientific and technological universities, several business schools and research centers and a business and entrepreneurial culture typical of the territory. Despite successive economic crises, the robustness of the ecosystem has meant that today the sector is made up of more than 2,100 startups and more than 140 digital centers of multinationals. These large companies choose the city for its ability to generate professionals specialized in technology at local universities and, above all, for its ability to attract talent from abroad. Hence, the reason why Barcelona leads the ranking of technological employment in Spain.
The report prepared by Cotec analyzes the monthly records of Social Security affiliates at the municipal level, to monitor the evolution in the last decade of employment in the thirteen most technological branches of activity in the economy, both industry and services. .
The report also analyzes smaller cities, and among those with more than 50,000 inhabitants, it identifies the twelve with the greatest weight of technological employment in their productive structure, three of which are Catalan cities: Rubí (19.6%), Cerdanyola del Vallès (14.3%), and Sant Cugat del Vallès (14.2%).
Barcelona also stands out as the city that has led the growth of technological employment, accumulating a growth of 67%, incorporating 57,000 net new technological affiliates since 2013. This growth is greater than that of Catalonia as a whole (46%) and that of Spain (48%).
Barcelona is among the ten main Spanish cities, those in which the weight of technological employment in the productive structure has grown the most, with 3.1 points, going from representing 8.7% of affiliates in 2013 to 11.8 % in 2023. After Barcelona, ??the second highest growth is detected in the city of Malaga (2.0 points), where the arrival of foreign multinationals has grown in recent years, and Valencia (1.8 points), where the entrepreneurial and innovative culture has been rooted for decades.
Among cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the report identifies seven municipalities that have led the increase in the weight of technological employment in their productive structure in the last decade. One of them is Catalan, Cerdanyola del Vallès, five are from Madrid (Las Rozas, Boadilla del Monte, Tres Cantos, Rivas Vaciamadrid, Getafe and Alcobendas) and the seventh is the Valencian city of Paterna.
In technological employment by sector, Cotec’s analysis identifies a very different behavior between the industrial branches (which together lost 3,130 affiliates, 8.3% less), and the service branches (which gained 59,741 affiliates, 127% less). further).
Within the services, the good performance of the programming and consulting branches stands out (which accumulates a growth of 193%, with 47,101 more net affiliates), and Research and Development (which accumulates a growth of 63%, with 6,023 net affiliates further). At the other extreme, within the industry the particularly negative evolution of motor vehicle manufacturing stands out (which loses 11% of its members, almost 2,000 less than in 2013).
At the level of branches of activity, Barcelona occupies a particularly prominent position in some technological branches, in which it has a higher percentage of affiliates compared to the 10 large capitals as a whole. Thus, the study points out, it is a leader in three industrial branches of technological employment (manufacturing of pharmaceutical products, manufacturing of motor vehicles, and chemical industry), and in two of the services (R&D, and programming and consulting).