Foreign workers occupy more than half of new jobs

BarcelonaDuring the last ten years, the number of foreign workers in Catalonia has doubled and they now total 773,000 employed. A report by Foment del Treball estimates the increase in this group 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 national average, which stands at 37.5%, despite La Rioja (55.2%), Castilla y León (58.9%), and the Basque Country (59.2) having larger proportions.

With this data, the president of Foment's Commission for Labor Relations and Human Resources, Luis Pérez, has emphasized 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 Spanish territory, the percentage is lower at 15.8%. In absolute terms, the increase positions Catalonia as the region in 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 has 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 assessed that there will be a “high percentage” of people who will move to the formal economy.

Wave of proceedings

During the quarterly presentation of the Report on the Labor Market and Collective Bargaining, Foment has also quantified the number of collective dismissal proceedings (ERO) for the first quarter. Specifically, the employers' association, using data from the Observatory of Labor, has noted an increase in termination proceedings compared to recent years, which have affected 1,874 workers in 71 different processes. Regarding the wave of layoffs in companies such as 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”.

In terms of 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 on Labor Relations and Human Resources has assured that one can observe a "deceleration in employment figures" and that, compared to the rest of the State, Catalonia is gradually losing "the competitive advantage that until now positively separated us".