They don’t just go abroad. Alicante Also loses thousands of skilled workers each year to other regions in Spain, especially to Madrid and Barcelona, as the report notes. The drain comes from a lack of job opportunities in the area that align with graduates’ education and professional goals, a trend highlighted by Ineca in a study presented this Wednesday at its headquarters in Alicante to explore the causes and propose potential remedies. The project is coordinated by Armando Ortuño, with researchers from the University of Alicante and the Miguel Hernández University participating.
One of the clearest findings is that graduates are underrepresented in the province’s employment landscape. University-educated individuals accounted for just 6.1% of all contracts in Alicante, a share that falls short of Madrid at 15.6% and Barcelona at 12.6%. It also trails behind provinces with similar structures, where college graduates secure 8.3% of new jobs in Malaga.
The image below shows the number of contracts by education level.
In reality, the region holds more than 1,000 jobs in the four provinces where most contracts require no higher education or only basic studies. The situation has changed little in recent years, as the university graduate share stood at 5.9% in 2014.
Among the contributing factors, the productive fabric of the area features sectors such as finance, insurance, technology, education, and health with smaller shares. The cluster of high-skilled sectors makes up only 15.8% of total employment, compared with 26.9% in Madrid and 23.3% in Barcelona.
Another factor is company size. The province hosts more than 250-employee firms but only about 150 such companies in total. Nationally, large firms account for roughly 72% of university graduate recruitment.
Salaries for people in Alicante are among the lowest in the country
The consequence of this landscape is a growing tendency for workers to look elsewhere for better opportunities than to move to Alicante for similar reasons.
Overall, 136,076 Alicante residents, encompassing workers with all levels of education, signed contracts to work in other cities, mainly on a temporary basis. By contrast, about 90,554 professionals moved to Alicante from other provinces, leaving a negative net balance of 46,207 contracts, a figure among the highest in the country.
While most of this shift involves seasonal rural or hospitality workers, the concern deepens when similar losses occur among other talent pools. The province sent 37 managers and a total of 5,067 technical and professional scientists and intellectuals to other regions, a number that nearly doubled the figure from six years earlier in 2015, according to data presented by Ortuño during the presentation.
In contrast, Malaga has enjoyed a decade of positive balance, attracting more workers than it exports, a contrast highlighted by Ineca’s director. This trend points to how mid-sized cities are becoming increasingly attractive to large firms seeking skilled labor due to factors like lower costs, shorter commutes, and a higher quality of life, reinforcing Alicante’s standing in INE’s national rankings as the country’s fifth-largest city in this regard.
Participants in the action at the University of Alicante on San Fernando Street were noted by Pilar Cortes in the event coverage for this publication.
The report emphasizes the need for growth-focused measures to support business expansion. Ortuño suggests expanding industrial land and allowing for larger plots while also adjusting training offerings to match the talent needs of local firms and to promote higher-value sectors. He notes that Alicante exports a significant share of its university-educated professionals and that education level correlates with per capita income. When combined with a high worker mobility rate among those over 45, this helps explain wage and income patterns in the province.
L’Alacantí alone accounted for 44.7% of university student contract activity in the state in 2019, according to the Ineca survey. The surrounding regions show imbalances in university graduate recruitment too, with La Vega Baja at 14.2% and Elche at 13.5%, followed by La Marina Baixa at 8.6%, and smaller shares in Marina Alta, l’Alcoià, Medio Vinalopó, Alto Vinalopó, and El Comtat. These numbers underscore the geographic concentration of skilled employment around the city of Alicante and the need for targeted regional strategies to balance opportunities across the province.