Spain’s job market has undergone a dramatic shift in the last five years, with the vast majority of new employment—71.4%—going to foreigners while young Spaniards increasingly leave the country in search of better opportunities.
A study by the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea) reveals that Spain is “importing waiters and bricklayers while exporting doctors and engineers.” Jesús Vega, a former HR director at Inditex and Banco Santander, calls this trend a tragedy, arguing that the country is squandering its investment in highly skilled professionals.
The study highlights a growing divide in Spain’s workforce. Foreign workers, often with lower education levels, are filling roles in construction, hospitality, and other low-skill sectors. At the same time, most job growth has gone to workers over 50, who now make up 35% of the workforce—a five-point increase in just five years. Meanwhile, workers aged 30 to 44 lost 634,000 jobs during the same period.
Youth unemployment, already a long-standing problem in Spain, continues to worsen. Many young Spaniards are not just struggling to find work—they’re leaving the country altogether. In the first half of 2022 alone, 220,443 people left Spain, the highest number since the depths of the financial crisis in 2013. The hardest-hit demographic? Workers aged 25 to 39.
This isn’t just a Spanish problem. Across the Western world, governments are favoring mass immigration policies that flood labor markets with low-skilled workers, driving down wages and pushing housing costs to unaffordable levels. In the U.S. and Canada, native-born workers—especially young men—are increasingly sidelined in favor of cheaper foreign labor, sometimes even facing outright discrimination under corporate DEI programs.
For businesses, mass immigration means lower wages, weaker labor unions, and greater profits. But for young Spaniards? It’s a future slipping away—one job at a time.
