95% of the jobs created in Spain in the last year were occupied by people not born in the country. It does not mean that they are recently arrived immigrants but employees not born in Spain, according to data compiled by the Demographic Observatory of the CEU-San Pablo University "Immigration in the labor market in Spain" with microdata from the Active Population Survey (EPA).
The economist Miquel Puig assures that for years the Spaniards can only aspire to the jobs that are released by other employees who retire, not to occupy the new positions that are created. "The tourism boom has not created any jobs for Spaniards," he adds, because, in his opinion, they tend to be jobs linked to the service sector with low wages.
The process by which the new job is occupied almost exclusively by immigrants has been studied for years by the UAB professor, Josep Oliver. For what is this? “The first reason is that there are few native people and with inadequate training for the positions that are offered,” he replies. "The second is that the Spanish economy has specialized in jobs with low added value such as services," adds Oliver.
The professor analyzes the average annual data since 2008 where the figures are somewhat different from those of the last 12 months. According to these statistics, in 2022, 55% of the new jobs created were for foreigners and in 2019 before the pandemic it was two out of three. In Catalonia, he qualifies, there are several years in which all the new employment was for those born abroad.
The UPF professor, Guillem López Casasnovas, specifies that the entire process is due "to the economic system we have, where jobs with little added value are created." In the report of the CEU Demographic Observatory, coordinated by Alejandro Macarrón, it is highlighted that immigration is concentrated in “activity sectors such as agriculture or construction”. Macarrón insists that -in his opinion- the positions are occupied by immigrants because the unemployed Spaniards who -perhaps have a subsidy- are not compensated for jobs with low wages. "We Spaniards are no longer competitive in Spain" for certain jobs, he says. The truth is that there are sectors, such as services for dependent people, taken over almost exclusively by workers born abroad.
And the process will continue in accordance with the forecasts of the INE on the evolution of demography. According to the statistics office, in the next three years the net migration that Spain will receive is close to half a million people each year.
"If it is not done well, we will have social problems like Ripoll's because the labor market is being pushed downward," says Oliver. It is like a demographic bomb due to the concatenation of processes: immigrants in Spain grow with each passing year. These citizens are workers who often occupy precarious and poorly paid jobs. And that ends up stressing public services such as education or health. At this point, López-Casasnovas believes that the arrival of foreigners who also demand services is added to the collapsed public health system. The professor points out that a temporary lack system should be established in the use of services such as the toilet to avoid their saturation.
But there are other consequences, such as in the case of access to housing. The massive arrival of immigrants requires a sufficient infrastructure of buildings to accommodate them. In Oliver's opinion, the current problems with rising rental prices cannot be explained without the increase in immigration.
In Funcas' latest magazine “Papeles de Economía”, San Francisco Federal Reserve researcher Joan Monras points out that “immigrants are limiting the ability of native workers to move to big cities”. He also warns that there is usually a correlation between the weight of immigrants in a territory and increases in housing prices.
Miquel Puig believes that in Spain (and in Catalonia) there is "an obsession with creating jobs". In his opinion, seeing the type of precarious jobs that are created and that end up being occupied by immigrants who demand public services, that is not the best social policy.
Regarding the effects that immigration can have on natives, in the article by Funcas Monras, he argues that based on economic theory “immigrant entries are more likely to negatively affect natives who are similar in terms of labor market characteristics, while they are likely to benefit all other natives." If this is the case, the most affected are the "young, low-skilled and living in high-priced" Spaniards, because this is the type of immigrant who has arrived in Spain since the waves of migration in the 2000s.
Regarding its fiscal impact, Monras assures that this is positive in some cases and negative in others because, given their "worse performance in the labor market in relation to natives, they suggest that the contribution of immigrants to the welfare state may be less than received by him”.
