Spain Employment | MTS Insights

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Spain Employment: Q4 2025 2026-01-27 03:00
Spain Employment: Q3 2025 2025-10-24 03:00
Spain’s total employment increased by 503.3k (+2.31% QoQ) in Q2 2025 to 22.27 million, while unemployment dropped -236.1k to 2.55 million, bringing the unemployment rate down -1.07 pts to 10.29%.
- Employment gains were broad-based: +364.8k in services, +90.3k in industry, +45.4k in construction, and +2.8k in agriculture.
- Full-time jobs rose by 485.3k; part-time employment increased by 18k. Permanent contracts were up +354.6k.
- Private sector employment rose by 480.5k; public sector by 22.9k.
- Unemployment fell -8.47% QoQ, with the jobless rate declining to 9.2% for men and 11.5% for women.
- The labor force expanded by 267.2k, raising the participation rate to 59.03%; households with all members employed rose by 290.3k.
- After seasonal adjustment, employment increased 0.68% QoQ, and unemployment dropped -2.18% QoQ.
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Spain’s total employment decreased -92.5k, or- 0.42% QoQ, in Q1 2025, but over the last year, employment is up 515.4k.
- The decline in employment was driven by a -112.3k drop in services employment which was partially offset by agriculture employment up 25k.
- Full-time employment declined by -109.4k people. Part-time employment rose by 16.9k.
- Private employment was basically unchanged as public employment accounted for almost all of the drop in employment.
- When seasonally adjusted, employment was actually up 0.73% QoQ
- The unemployment rate increased 75 bps to 11.36%, and the total number of unemployed increased 193.7k to 2.79 million.
- The increase in unemployment in Q1 2025 was the largest for a Q1 in over 10 years.
- After seasonal adjustment, employment was actually down -0.73% QoQ.
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Employment: Q4 2024

Spanish employment ended 2024 with an increase of 34,800 after declines in Q4 2023 and Q4 2022. This comes out to a seasonally adjusted quarterly increase of 0.8%. The services sector added a bulk of the jobs (+24,000) with industry accounting for about a fifth of the increase (+7,000). Agricultural (+3,200) and construction (+600) rounded out the sectors with small job gains. Notably, private employment actually fell over the quarter, down -15,600.

The more surprising result might be in the unemployment change. Data show a decline of -158,600 unemployed individuals in Q4 2024, the largest fourth quarter drop since Q4 2021 and excluding that quarter which was affected by COVID, the largest drop in over a decade. In percentage terms, this was a -5.8% QoQ decline. With that sharp decline in unemployment, the Spanish unemployment rate fell -59 bps to 10.61%, the lowest since Q2 2008 and below expectations of a smaller decline to 11.10%.

The Q4 decline in unemployment is especially interesting considering the country dealt with massive flooding in October 2024 which was supposed to have a negative impact GDP by about -0.2 ppts. In the end, it seems that record tourism levels are continuing to boost the local economy and are making Spain one of the brightest economies in the EU.

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