• Staff shortages hit construction, hospitality, and transport particularly hard

• The lack of qualified profiles, and not of people, explains the paradox of the Spanish labor market

Spain wastes 18.2% of its available workforce, a total of 4.69 million people willing to work according to the latest Eurostat data, despite the fact that 45% of companies continue to see their activity hindered by “difficulties associated with the availability of labor.” Two figures that illustrate that the mismatch between labor supply and demand does not respond exclusively to the volume of people available to work and raises the question of whether the regularization of migrants will be able to help reduce it.

The latest data from the Bank of Spain’s Survey of Business Activity (EBAE) reveal a certain decline over the last year in the negative impact of one factor, the lack of workers, whose relevance had been soaring since 2021 and peaked at 48% at the end of last year. A trend, on the other hand, that is consistent with the slowdown in the labor market over the last year, which the supervisor has been warning about: if employment is created with less intensity, it is logical that the pressure from the lack of employees relaxes.

But it remains the second most important factor after uncertainties in economic policy (50%) and above energy costs, which stand at 42%. However, the fieldwork was carried out before the outbreak of the armed conflict between the United States and Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the impact of which will be perceived more clearly in the coming months.

According to the Bank of Spain, the problem of the lack of labor continues to occur especially in labor-intensive activities: construction, hospitality, and transport, where 58%, 55%, and 52% of companies, respectively, “declare that this factor affects them negatively.” This evolution is consistent with the increase in vacancies reflected in the Quarterly Labor Cost Survey, which shows 155,713 positions to be filled at the close of 2025. However, this barely represents 0.9% of existing employment, the lowest rate in the euro area.

The difficulty in filling vacancies creates a sort of ‘pincer movement’ with the growing volume of temporary disability leaves, a source of strain mentioned on several occasions by the Bank of Spain. However, labor availability problems are linked not to worker absences but to difficulties in hiring suitable profiles.

According to the supervisor, the lack of professionals qualified for the demanded position “creates a mismatch in the labor market,” as stated in its Annual Report for 2024, published in May 2025, which will be updated in a few days. It also pointed to the existence of “cyclical elements.”

“In an expansionary phase, the number of companies demanding new jobs increases, but, at the same time, the minimum wage that unemployed people are willing to accept also rises,” the body stresses. However, the institution directed by José Luis Escrivá does not specify the role played by the increase in the SMI benchmark decided by the Government using political criteria.

4.7 MILLION WILLING WORKERS

The fact is that these factors can explain one of the great paradoxes of the labor market: despite the aforementioned slowdown, employment continues to be created more strongly than in the rest of the UE, but it does not seem to reduce unemployment with the same intensity. According to the EPA, 527,600 employed people were added in the first quarter compared to a year earlier, while only 80,600 unemployed individuals were reduced, and there are still 2.7 million.

Although the available labor force is much larger if we count all labor slack. This indicator, prepared by Eurostat, adds to the 2.6 million strictly unemployed people those inactive individuals who want a job but are not actively looking for one (717,000) or are not immediately available to start (253,000), as well as underemployed workers in part-time jobs (1.1 million) who want to improve their conditions. The total figure, according to Eurostat estimates, amounts to 4.69 million.

Furthermore, unemployment is increasingly concentrated among older workers, aged 45 and over, who in many cases do not fit the profiles preferred by labor-intensive sectors.

This mismatch explains why the labor market needs talent coming from abroad, as shown by the increase in migrant workers or the endorsement given by business owners to the latest regularization of foreigners. But the problem, as experts warn, is the qualification of these workers. Although not only due to a lack of preparation.

Spain is the UE country with the highest rate of overqualified workers for their current position, at 37.3%. But in the case of nationals, it drops to 32.7% (also the highest in the UE), while for non-UE citizens it shoots up by nearly twenty points, to 52.3% (the third highest after Greece’s 85% and Estonia’s 60%).

In the case of the unemployed, the problem is not just training, but the certification of skills acquired through professional experience (something that became especially clear after the bursting of the real estate bubble). In the case of foreigners, the problem is even greater, since in many cases they find that their qualifications are not recognized in Spain.

A situation that may be aggravated when the regularization brings to light half a million potential workers who, although they will now be able to access legal employment, will encounter the same barrier as those immigrants with work permits, as well as a third of Spaniards.

Source: elEconomista