Spain reached a historic peak in international tourism in 2024 with 94 million visitors registered, a 10 percent increase over the previous year, according to data from Spain's Ministry of Industry and Tourism.
BARCELONA, Spain, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The tourism boom that Spain experienced in 2024 is one of the main reasons why the country registered half a million new jobs last year and the lowest unemployment rate for 17 years, Spanish economist Montse Guillen told Xinhua in an interview on Wednesday.
Data published by Spain's Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration on Jan. 3 showed that 501,952 new jobs were created in 2024, the fourth consecutive year in which employment has grown, while unemployment dropped by 5.4 percent to 2,560,718 people (146,738 fewer), its lowest level since December 2007.
"Certain reforms have been made that means that some jobs that were previously done informally are now being done under contract and so these jobs that existed before are now being counted, and at the same time there has been a huge boom in the tourism sector," Guillen told Xinhua.
Spain reached a historic peak in international tourism in 2024 with 94 million visitors registered, a 10 percent increase over the previous year, according to data from Spain's Ministry of Industry and Tourism.
"In Spain, there is a lot of hiring before the summer, which is when more workers are needed by the agricultural industry in the countryside for food production and harvests and also because more workers are needed for the increase in tourism in the summer," added the professor.
Employment in Spain in 2024 peaked in June with 21.4 million people in work and for six of the twelve months last year that figure remained above 21.3 million.
Coinciding with the Christmas period, December was also a good month for the employment figures with 35,000 new jobs, the best December in the past three years, and 25,300 fewer people registered as unemployed.
"Those who want to work can find work but what we need to look at is the quality of this work," Guillen added and she identified improving productivity and raising wages as "the pending issues to address and our future goal."
The professor also described the phenomenon of young Spaniards finding better-paid jobs abroad as "a poor investment" and she pointed out that after assuming the expense of training young people "another country then gets an engineer or a doctor or a mathematician for free."
In fact, this is an area that the Spanish government wants to address and it has launched this month the State Plan for Voluntary Return which aims to facilitate the return of Spaniards living abroad.
Nearly three million Spaniards are registered as residing abroad by the Spanish Institute of Statistics, principally in Argentina, France, the United States, Britain, and Germany.
"Many of them left our country because the economic situation and the job market did not meet their needs. We think that's changed, our labor market is much better now, and we want to make it easier for them to return if they wish to do so," said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, at the program's launch last week. ■
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