Social Security has gained more than 350,000 foreign contributors in a year and exceeded 3.4 million in June

Social Security has once again recorded a record high number of foreign contributors both in terms of average number of contributors and seasonally adjusted figures. Specifically, there are 3,446,178 contributors on average in April, which is 86,630 more than in the previous month and 350,163 more than a year ago. This figure puts the year-on-year change at 11.31%, whilst the total number of contributors has risen 2.8%.

Specifically, discounting seasonality and the calendar effect, Social Security now has 3,329,979 foreign contributors, after adding 330,754 in the last 12 months.

"Foreign contributors support strategic sectors such as care, agriculture, construction, hospitality, transport and healthcare, and we can see this in the sector-by-sector employment figures," explains Minister Elma Saiz.

Overall, the number of foreign contributors has increased by more than 980,000 since June 2022. In fact, 44.5% of the employment created since the implementation of the labour reform corresponds to foreign workers.

Whilst the number of foreign workers who are national insurance contributors has shown strong growth in the first half of the year, the rate of change has been increasing since the end of April, when the process of regularising the status of foreign nationals was launched.

At 30 June, there were already 159,097 national insurance contributors as a result of the regularisation process, the vast majority - 83.4% - being covered by the General Social Security Scheme. Furthermore, permanent contracts are the most common type of contract among new hires (77.3 per cent).

By activity, these new registrations, which are taking place as part of the regularisation process, are concentrated in: Hospitality (38,776), Retail (20,195), Administrative Services (19,327) and Construction (18,310).

Average contributors

Of the 3,446,178 foreign contributors, nearly 2 million (1,965,796) are men, while the number of women is almost 1.5 million (1,480,382). The presence of female workers from other countries is increasing overall and represents 43% of all foreign workers.

A total of 28.5% of the foreign contributors come from EU countries.

Morocco remains the country with the most national insurance contributors, now exceeding 422,000 (422,347). This is followed by Romania (353,974), Colombia (316,460), Venezuela (239,892), Italy (223,500), China (133,098), Peru (122,633) and Ukraine (84,020).

"We can see that their presence is becoming increasingly diverse and growing across all sectors," explains the minister. "They are particularly prominent in high value-added sectors such as telecommunications, software development and IT, where they now account for more than 14% of all contributors in the General Scheme".

Sectors of salaried workers

While they represent 15.4% of all workers, the contribution of foreign workers is particularly significant in some sectors of the General Social Security Scheme. In Hospitality, they represent 31.5% of contributors; in Agriculture, 28.9%; in Construction, 25.9%; in Administrative Activities, 18.2%; and in Transportation, 18.6%. In the Special System for Domestic Workers, they represent 45.5%, and in the Agricultural System, 41.7%.

In addition, it is worth noting the high percentage of foreign workers with permanent contracts, 87.8% of the total. When compared to the average percentage for the period 2017-2021, prior to the labour reform (41.1%), the figure is even more striking.

Meanwhile, the temporary employment rate for this group of workers has fallen to historic lows, with the percentage of foreign workers with temporary contracts dropping to 12.2%, also below that of Spanish nationals (12.3%).

Entrepreneurship in high-skill sectors

On the other hand, the number of self-employed workers continues to grow and is now above 525,000 (525,478), which is 7.9% more than a year ago.

It is worth noting the growing presence of foreign workers who are starting businesses in highly skilled sectors such as Telecommunications and Computer Programming, where they now represent 32.7% of those registered in this sector, meaning they are now one in three entrepreneurs. Their representation is also significant in other activities, such as Household Activities (27.5%), Hotels and restaurants (25.5%), Administrative Activities (18.9%), Real Estate Activities (18.4%) and Construction (18.3%).

Non official translation