Spain faces ongoing hiring difficulties despite economic shifts
Finding the right candidate remains a persistent challenge for companies in Spain, a country that still grapples with high unemployment within the European Union. At the close of the previous year, a report from Randstad, presented by the employers’ group CEOE, highlighted that three out of four companies struggled to fill their open positions. A year on, the same issue persists, prompting some firms to rethink hiring biases and broaden their search for talent.
Recent data from the Pimec Foundation underscore a specific trend: many firms lack suitable profiles and continue to hire older workers, with a notable emphasis on candidates over 55. Yet a large portion of companies—around 63 percent—still do not actively pursue this demographic. This indicates a disconnect between potential labor pool opportunities and corporate hiring practices.
Across industries, skilled labor shortages are a common refrain. Yet salary updates have not rolled out uniformly enough to render work more attractive across all sectors. Utilities and hospitality serve as examples where wages have risen since the pandemic, but remain below national averages. In contrast, sectors such as banking and education have shown mixed responses, while the transport and healthcare sectors have surpassed the Spanish average with more substantial salary increases since 2019.
These movements outline a broader evolution in the labor market. The latest Active Population Survey (EPA) paints a picture of Spain’s earnings: the average gross monthly wage for a full-time employee sits around 2,341 euros, roughly 6 percent higher than the pre-pandemic 2019 figure. This data point offers a lens into how wage dynamics have shifted in response to labor demand and macroeconomic pressures.
Two sectors stand out for especially pronounced wage gains since the onset of Covid: energy and information and communications technology (ICT). The energy sector has benefited from higher profits and geopolitical tensions that affected households, while the ICT sector has faced a intensifying global race to attract top programmers, data analysts, and cybersecurity engineers. Companies in these fields report stronger salary growth as they compete for scarce specialized talent.
On the flip side, mining professionals have not seen comparable salary growth. In fact, payrolls in this sector have declined in relative terms, influenced by rising energy costs and additional structural pressures facing private dependency sectors. The uneven salary trajectory across industries highlights how macroeconomic forces shape recruitment and retention differently from one field to another.
Policy discussions around vacancy quotas and access to the workforce also surfaced in government circles. A period of policy adjustment allowed immigrants already residing in Spain, but lacking work permits, to streamline their status to ease recruitment. Plans to recruit directly at origin stirred debate within the Ministry of Labour, while the Ministry of Economy argued there was no vacancy problem to address—reflecting a broader tension between labor supply and policy responses.
In recent months, a clash emerged between the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Labour over unemployment benefits. The Economy ministry proposed reshaping the benefit to provide a larger initial payment with a gradually decreasing amount, aiming to incentivize unemployed individuals to take available jobs. Conversely, the Labour Ministry has urged maintaining, or even increasing, income levels to prevent pushing the unemployed into low-quality employment. The dialogue underscores a common policy challenge: balancing support for job seekers with incentives to participate in the labor market.