Foreign companies generate 1 in 10 jobs in Spain

French, American, German, British, Dutch, Italian, Swiss, Swedish, Japanese, Mexican, Russian, Irish and Quatary companies generate 1 in 10 jobs in Spain.

“The stock of foreign investment in Spain generates one million 760 thousand direct jobs, close to 9 percent of the employed population in the country,” reveals Paloma Cabrera López, president of the Multinationals with Spain association.

Almost twenty countries are identified with more than 10,000 jobs in Spain in 2021, the concentration of employment in the top 10 countries has traditionally been high in the country, points out the director of Accenture.

While in 2013 these 10 countries, all of them European except the United States, concentrated 87 percent of employment, in 2021 they slightly lost their share to 84 percent, giving rise to the first Asian country (Japan), details the 2013-2023 report. decade of uninterrupted expansion of foreign investment in Spain.

“These ten countries, led by France, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, are responsible for 88 percent of the employment growth between both years,” explains the report financed by the Multinationals with Spain association.

He adds that the changes in the composition and order of the main investors in Spain in terms of employment in this period have been very small: “Although it is a variable greatly affected by changes in ownership of some large employing companies in Spain.”

Aside from the increases in employment in the main investing countries, the growth in Spain between 2013 and 2021 in employment in absolute terms in Mexican, Irish, Russian or Qatari companies is significant, the research specifies.

“The strong progression of Chinese companies was cut short in 2021, with a very significant decrease in their employment levels due to the change of ownership of a building services company, now in North American hands,” he points out.

The Spanish economic context of the decade 2013-2022 has been relatively stable, after the 2012 debt crisis that culminated the financial crisis that began six years earlier and until the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

“Once the risk premiums were channeled, in 2013 Spain was preparing for a period of growth, although accompanied by the highest unemployment rate in history (26.14 percent), a high debt-to-GDP ratio and growing inequality in the distribution of income”, he specifies.

Point out that the measures adopted by the European Central Bank bore fruit and the Spanish economy would grow at rates close to or greater than 3% for more than five years, with a gradual decrease in unemployment and excessively contained prices, but which did not compromise the growth.

In this way, after the financial crisis, the Spanish economy experienced a return to the path of recovery and expansion between 2014 and 2019, which was cut short by the collapse of the world economy in 2020-2021.

The paralysis of the economy in the second quarter of 2020 caused the most significant decline in Spanish real GDP (and that of the rest of the European economies) in peacetime, 10.8 percent.

The nature of the shock and the enormous resources that were made available to the agents meant that the effects on employment, for example, were not so dramatic and the recovery was rapid, closing the year 2021 with a growth of 5.0 percent and of 5.5 percent in 2022, two points higher than that of the euro zone.

“Spain ended the 2013-2022 decade with spectacular growth, although, predictably, this growth will weaken in 2023 and 2024, although it will remain – according to the latest OECD forecasts for the month of October – above the average “European.”

Despite the extraordinary growth of the last two years, the Spanish economy recovered its pre-pandemic level in the first quarter of 2023, he added.

The positive behavior of the foreign sector, the dynamism of employment – supported by wage moderation – and the fiscal impulse have constituted elements of support for private activity, which have made this recovery possible, concludes the Multinationals with Spain association.

These are the nationalities of the companies that provide employment in Spain