Foreign workers fill 70% of Spain's new jobs: success or mirage?

Foreign workers fill 70% of Spain's new jobs: success or mirage?

A neighbourhood hair salon in Madrid is looking for a receptionist. Salary: €1,200 gross. Three candidates: two recently arrived migrants and a 28-year-old Spaniard with a hairdressing qualification. The owner hires the first one willing to work half an hour extra without pay. That scene, repeated every day, explains better than any official speech why 70% of the jobs created in Spain over the past year have gone to migrants, according to data from El Independiente.

A labour market split in two

The figure, which has reignited the debate over Spain's labour model, allows for several readings. On one hand, there are those who point out that migrants mostly take low-skilled jobs – waiters, delivery riders, cleaners – that locals reject as poorly paid and precarious. On the other, some stress that there are also growing numbers of foreign doctors, engineers and executives, mostly from Latin America, filling vacancies the Spanish education system fails to supply.

The most contentious point emerges when looking at job quality. According to critics of the model, a large share of these new positions are temporary or in the informal economy: while Social Security registrations rise, so does fraud in sectors such as hospitality and delivery. The argument is that stable employment is being replaced with cheap labour, which some call wage dumping.

Training as the yardstick

Some argue the problem is not migrants but the lack of reskilling among Spanish workers. In many trades – hairdressing, plumbing, customer service – newcomers are willing to train in vocational programmes while locals resist. The result is that even in skilled jobs such as healthcare, the share of foreign workers keeps rising.

---

The final figure that baffles: despite the institutional preference for hiring vulnerable groups – where migrants enter with an advantage – long-term unemployment among native Spanish men without qualifications remains above 20%. Spain's labour market does not create jobs for everyone equally; it creates them for whoever is willing to accept the conditions on offer.