Half of the shop assistants and waiters were born outside of Catalonia.

BarcelonaBehind the English word retail Clothing stores, hairdressers, beauty salons, and florists are hidden here, as are restaurants and cafes. This concept is the one chosen by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce to encompass all street-level businesses, also known as the retail sector, which employs almost 15 out of every 100 workers in Catalonia. In a study presented this Thursday, the business entity detailed that there are 569,144 people employed in this type of activity, of which half were born outside the Principality, 57.7 percent are women, and 30 percent are under 30 years old.

The Chamber's analysis makes it clear that these three characteristics are the most present in the retail sector: 18.2% of employed women in Catalonia work in these businesses, as do one in four young people with jobs, and 23.5% of foreign workers. The objective of this study, the institution explained, is to create a portrait of the sociodemographic profile of these employees to promote these professions and assert that, in addition to being a gateway for many people to the labor market, they are also an option "for building a career and earning a living."

But the reality is that this sector pays much lower salaries than the average of Catalan employees: specifically, workers in the retail They earn 29% less than the rest. Their gross annual salary is 20,367 euros, a difference of about 8,400 euros per year. Furthermore, despite the changes brought about by the labor reform, there is more temporary employment than in other activities. Although the proportion of permanent open-ended contracts has increased from 74% in 2021 to 80% in 2024, 15% of temporary contracts (compared to 12.6% of the total Catalan labor market) remain to cover peak work periods such as sales or Christmas. Fixed-term contracts, which allow workers to maintain a relationship with the company when there is no activity, have grown in recent years to 7.3%, a higher proportion than the average. This comparative grievance also appears in the gender gap. Despite being a highly feminized sector, retail Women earn 30.6% less than men, a figure that is 10 percentage points higher than the average.

A feminized sector

Regarding the large presence of foreign workers in the retail sector, Carme Poveda, head of economic analysis at the Chamber of Commerce, explained that they are primarily young people with a higher level of education than natives—34% have higher education—and come mainly from Latin America (27%) and Asia (9.1%). "One of the challenges of this integration is Catalan. We must facilitate assistance so that the entire population working in the sector has the ability to provide service in Catalan," stressed Laura López, director of Commerce at the organization.

In her recommendations, she also proposed measures such as empowering women and young people to reach management positions, investing in ongoing training for staff, and ensuring generational renewal in a sector suffering from an aging business community.