Foreign workers occupy more than half of the new jobs

BarcelonaDuring the last ten years, the number of foreign workers in Catalonia has doubled and now amounts to 773,000 employees. A report by Foment del Treball estimates the collective's increase between the first quarter of 2016 and that of 2026 at 386,700 people. The strong growth has boosted their weight in the net new employment created in Catalonia over the last decade, to the point of absorbing more than half (52.3%). This figure places the country almost 15 percentage points above the State average, which stands at 37.5%, although La Rioja (55.2%), Castile and León (58.9%), and the Basque Country (59.2) have larger proportions.

With this data, the president of Foment's Commission for Labor Relations and Human Resources, Luis Pérez, remarked that "the economy needs this contribution to continue growing." In fact, according to data from the same study, in Catalonia one in five workers (20%) are already foreign nationals, whereas 10 years ago they represented 12.4% of the total. In the rest of the Spanish territory, the percentage is lower, at 15.8%. In absolute terms, the increase places Catalonia as the region of the State with the highest number of foreign workers in the labor market, followed by Madrid, which has 685,800 foreign employees.

Given the current process of migrant regularization, Pérez highlighted the need to incorporate new profiles into the market and recalled that currently the biggest labor challenges are "absenteeism" and "lack of talent." The president of Foment's Commission for Labor Relations and Human Resources also stated that there will be a "high percentage" of people who will move to the formal economy.

Wave of layoffs

During the quarterly presentation of the Labor Market and Collective Bargaining Report, Foment has also quantified the number of employment regulation files (EROs) for the first quarter. Specifically, the employers' association, with data from the Observatory of Work, has noted an increase in termination files compared to recent years, affecting 1,874 workers in 71 different processes. Regarding the wave of layoffs at companies like Ficosa, Nissan, and Nestlé, the director of the Department of Labor Relations and Social Affairs, Yésika Aguilar, has analyzed that they do not respond to "a single factor".

Regarding employment, Pérez has stated that, according to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA), we are facing "one of the worst starts in recent years". Furthermore, the president of the Commission for Labor Relations and Human Resources has assured that one can read a "deceleration of employment figures" and that, compared to the rest of Spain, Catalonia is gradually losing "the competitive advantage that has until now positively separated us".