May 1st is a public holiday celebrated in all the autonomous communities of Spain. It is the third of the eight non-replaceable holidays throughout the year, after the Epiphany of the Lord, on January 6, and Good Friday, on April 7.

A day full of retribution and which served as the cornerstone of the labor movement during the time of the Industrial Revolution. This day, which was declared a holiday in 1889 by the Socialist Labor Congress of the Second International, is considered the birthplace of the eight-hour workday that is standard practice today.

The beginnings of today's celebrations

A late 19th century labor movement in the United States and Europe gave rise to today's Labor Day celebration.

The main objective of this movement was to fight for improved working conditions and an eight-hour workweek. In the United States, a general strike was organized on May 1, 1886, to demand the above-mentioned demands. The Chicago protest provoked a brutal police response that came to be remembered as the Haymarket Square Massacre. During this incident, both protesters and police officers lost their lives.

May Day came to be considered an important milestone in the struggle for workers' rights and was eventually adopted as a day of remembrance for workers' struggles around the world. The International Congress of the Second International met in Paris in 1889, and at that time it was decided that May 1 would be celebrated as International Workers' Day.

Throughout its history, Labor Day has been a day of vindication and protest for the rights of workers and community members. Even in modern times, it remains a public holiday in Spain, and on this day workers are honored for their contributions to the growth and advancement of the nation.

On the eve of such a vindicating date, we ask ourselves: what is the situation of the immigrant working class in Spain?

Here are some conclusions and considerations.

Spanish labor market and immigration

It is crucial to remember the dynamics of Spain's economic development in order to understand the roots of the significant immigration process that began in the early 2000s and ended in 2008. At that time, Spain was experiencing an exceptional period of economic expansion, which resulted in the creation of 4.7 million new jobs, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).

Only 2.2 million new jobs were filled by native workers. Therefore, it was necessary for 2.5 million foreigners to enter the Spanish labor market. This represented approximately 5 out of every 10 new jobs.

During the 2000-2007 expansionary phase, approximately half of the GDP growth was supported by population growth and, in turn, 82% of the population increase was attributable to immigration. All of this occurred during the period of economic expansion.

Another interesting aspect to consider is the attainment of Spanish nationality.

Spanish nationality is clearly a milestone in terms of integration, but it is also a desire that many immigrants want to make a reality, initiating the procedures as soon as they meet the conditions.

Although the foreign-born resident population in Spain represents 18.18% of the total population, there are autonomous communities where the percentage exceeds 20%: Illes Balears (27.65%), Canarias (22.56%), Catalunya (23.80%), Madrid (23.80%), Melilla (23.37%) or Comunitat Valenciana (22.51%).

On 1 January 2024, the number of foreign-born resident population was 8,838,234, as well as the foreign-born population born in Spain resident in 503,548, which adds up to a population of immigrant origin resident in Spain of 9,341,234, as well as a foreign-born resident population born in Spain of 503,548, which which adds up to a population of immigrant origin resident in Spain of 9,341,782, 19.21% of the total population, which was 48,619,695. Almost one in five people resident in Spain had immigrant origins.

The data also tells us that significant immigration flows have been maintained over time, even despite the economic crises of recent years. Why is this?

According to the report by the Demographic Observatory of the CEU San Pablo University entitled ‘Immigration in the Spanish labour market’, from July 2023, the main theoretical justification for mass labour immigration, and specifically the fact that more than 7.2 million foreign-born people have come to live in Spain between May 1996 and April 2023, is to fill vacancies in the labour market with foreign labour. This has made it possible to fill the gaps in the Spanish labour market, gaps created by the persistently low birth rate, which has meant, among other things, that for years more people have been retiring than entering the labour market as young people.

In our opinion, there are two very important factors:

• A first explanation may lie in the fact that migration is, to a large extent, a process of mobility with a vocation for permanence, which means that the return of foreigners in the short and medium term is not always a routine behavior. In other words, migration has a vocation for permanence.
• On the other hand, migration is fundamentally a phenomenon of family displacement, which requires continuous processes of family regrouping. The networks that are gradually woven in the host countries create a constant dynamic of recruitment of new migrants, even if the experience is often not entirely rewarding.

Importance of the foreign population in the Spanish labor market

According to the conclusions of the aforementioned study, the contribution of immigration to the Spanish labour market and to the economy in general is indisputable. In fact, immigration has helped to fill some job vacancies due to the lack of Spaniards willing to do low-paid jobs, such as caring for young children or the elderly, or collecting rubbish. However, the question of how to better integrate immigrants into society from a socioeconomic point of view remains unresolved. Nevertheless, although the majority of the immigrant population works in basic and low-paid occupations, 94% say they feel welcome. Furthermore, although the majority claim to have a strong sense of belonging, their job and salary stability remains low.

It is important to bear in mind that not all foreigners who have lived in Spain have done so for the same length of time. Therefore, their contribution and impact on the labour market varies. The length of residence is a determining factor in their integration into the labour market.

This is not only true with regard to renewals in the general regime, but also with regard to the regularisation opportunities offered by the arraigo (integration) procedure. More than half of foreigners (54%), that is, almost a third of them (32%), have been living in Spain for more than 13 years, of which 8% have been here for more than 24 years. At the other extreme, 6% of non-Spanish residents have been in the country for less than a year, and almost a quarter (23%) have been here for less than four years.

Non-Europeans, who make up the vast majority of foreigners who have arrived in Spain in the last decade, are much more likely than Spaniards and other Europeans to work in lower-skilled occupations. This is particularly the case in the category of ‘elementary occupations’, in which a large proportion of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians work, and in the category of ‘restaurant, personal, security and sales services’. Specifically, the proportion of Africans employed in ‘elementary occupations’ was 40% in the first quarter of 2023. On the other hand, a significantly higher proportion of Western Europeans than Spaniards are employed as managers and supervisors, and few of them are in ‘elementary occupations’. Furthermore, among those belonging to the group ‘Europe, excluding the EU and North America’, there is a higher proportion of managers than among native Spaniards, which is mainly due to native British and American citizens.

According to the results of the Labor Force Survey (fourth quarter of 2021), the number of people born outside Spain was 6.7 million, 14.3% of the total. If we take into account only their nationality, regardless of where they were born or grew up, the figure is lower (5.2 million). But dual nationality adds the remaining 1.5 million.

Conclusion

Throughout Spain, immigrants, who in 2022 occupied 16.5% of all jobs, occupied 26.4% of jobs in the agricultural sector, 11.6% in industry, 24.8% in construction and 16.7% in services. Other data of interest are:

• The vast majority of foreign women work in the service sector, which is also the majority sector for Spanish women. The majority of foreign men also work in this sector, but in a lower proportion than Spanish men. Regardless of nationality, in 2022 women held 54% of the jobs in this sector.
• Foreigners have a much greater relative presence in agriculture, where, in turn, women are in the minority, as worldwide only 23% of people employed in this sector were women in 2022.
• In industry, where 72% of jobs are held by men, the presence of immigrants is low, both in relative terms with respect to the total number of foreigners and with respect to Spaniards.
• In construction, where there are very few women (only 9% of jobs in 2022), the presence of foreigners is very high, particularly Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans.

From all of this we can conclude without a doubt that immigration in Spain plays a significant and growing role in the Spanish labour market because:

• Immigration has a significant and growing weight among the active population (20% of jobs in the first quarter of 2023 were occupied by immigrants), and especially in certain types of jobs and sectors of activity, such as agriculture or construction.
• In recent years, the vast majority of net new jobs have been taken by foreigners, close to 100% in new private jobs.
• Spain manages its migratory flows very badly, given its extremely high structural levels of unemployment, both among native Spaniards and (even more so) among foreigners, minimised in the official statistics. Despite this, massive immigration continues to arrive, which in recent years has been almost exclusively from outside the EU.

According to researchers at the University of San Pablo (CEU), Spain has suffered from a serious chronic problem of high unemployment since the transition, which has only been alleviated in years of great economic expansion and has reached very high levels during the crises. Unfortunately, politicians and the media seem to have resigned themselves to living with this scourge or to downplaying it, despite the suffering of so many millions of unemployed, which is very costly for taxpayers and for the balance of public finances, and therefore for the economy in general, and which implies that there is much more supply than demand for certain types of employment, which translates into greater labour competition for a large part of the population and, ceteris paribus, into lower wages.

On the other hand, the idea of the demographic winter, defined as the constant process of ageing and decrease in the number of the working age population, is frequently related to the impact of the immigrant population on the economy of the country of destination. Since 2002, according to the INE, the number of Spaniards of working age born in Spain has decreased by more than one million, while the number of Spaniards of working age born abroad has increased by approximately 4.2 million.

If all the foreigners currently working in the Spanish economy were to leave tomorrow, the total number of people in employment would fall to 16.9 million, 20% below its all-time high. Furthermore, if all vacancies were filled by Spaniards currently looking for work, the number of people in employment would continue to fall to below 19.3 million, almost 10% less than its all-time high.