95% of the jobs created in Spain last year were occupied by people not born in the country. It does not mean that they are newly arrived immigrants, but employees who were not born in Spain, according to data compiled by the Demographic Observatory of the CEU-San Pablo University in Immigration to the labor market in Spain, with microdata from the Active Population Survey (EPA) .
Economist Miquel Puig assures that for years Spaniards can only aspire to the jobs vacated by other employees who retire, not to occupy the new positions that are created. “The tourism boom has not created any jobs for the Spanish”, he adds, because, in his opinion, they are usually jobs linked to the service sector with low wages.
The process by which the new occupation is occupied almost exclusively by immigrants has been studied for years by UAB professor Josep Oliver. What is it due to? “The first reason is that there are few native people and with inadequate training for the positions offered”, he replies. “The second is that the Spanish economy has specialized in jobs with low added value such as services”, adds Oliver.
The professor analyzes the average annual data since 2008 and the figures are slightly different from those of the last twelve months. According to these statistics, in 2022 55% of the new employment created was for foreigners, and in 2019, before the pandemic, it was two out of three. In Catalonia, nuance, there have been several years in which all the new employment was for those born abroad.
UPF professor Guillem López Casasnovas points out that the whole process is due to “the economic system we have, in which jobs with little added value are created”. In the report of the Demographic Observatory of the CEU, which is coordinated by Alejandro Macarrón, it is highlighted that immigration is concentrated in “sectors of activity such as agriculture or construction”. Macarrón insists that – in his opinion – the positions are filled by immigrants because the unemployed Spaniards who – perhaps have a subsidy – are not compensated by jobs with low wages. “The Spanish are no longer competitive in Spain” for certain jobs, he says. The truth is that there are sectors, such as that of services for dependent people, occupied almost exclusively by workers born abroad.
And the process will continue in accordance with the forecasts of the INE on the evolution of demography. According to the statistics office, over the next three years the net migration that Spain will receive is close to half a million people each year.
“If it is not done well, we will have social problems like the one in Ripoll, because the labor market is being pushed down,” says Oliver. It is like a demographic bomb due to the concatenation of processes: the number of immigrants in Spain grows every year that passes. These citizens are workers who usually occupy precarious and poorly paid jobs. And this ends up straining public services such as education and health. At this point, López Casasnovas believes that part of the collapse of public health is due to the absorption of a huge amount of foreigners with serious needs. The professor points out that some system of temporary shortages in the use of services such as healthcare should be established to prevent it from becoming saturated.
But there are other consequences, as in the case of access to housing. The massive arrival of immigrants requires a sufficient real estate infrastructure to house them. In Oliver’s opinion, the current problems with rising rent prices cannot be explained without the increase in immigration.
In the latest magazine Papeles de Economía Española de Funcas, San Francisco Federal Reserve researcher Joan Monras points out that “immigrants are limiting the ability of native workers to move to big cities.” In addition, he warns that there is usually a correlation between the weight of immigrants in certain territories and increases in house prices.
Miquel Puig believes that in Spain (and Catalonia) there is “an obsession with job creation”. In his opinion, seeing the type of precarious jobs that are created and that end up being occupied by immigrants who demand public services, this is not the best social policy.
Regarding the effects that immigration can have on the natives, in the article by Funcas Monras he states that based on economic theory “it is more likely that the inflows of immigrants negatively affect the natives who are similar in terms of the characteristics of the labor market, while all other natives are likely to benefit”. In this case, the most harmed are the Spaniards “young, poorly qualified and who live in places where there are high prices” because this is the type of immigrant that arrives in Spain since the migration waves of the 2000s.
Regarding its fiscal impact in Spain, Monras assures that it is positive in some cases and negative in others, because, given their “worst performance in the labor market in relation to the natives, they suggest that the contribution of immigrants to the ‘ State of well-being may be less than what they receive from their side”.
