España supera por primera vez los tres millones de afiliados extranjeros a la Seguridad Social

Social Security has exceeded the average 3 million foreign affiliates for the first time, reaching 3,070,831 in May, after an increase of 73,524 compared to April and 187,864 compared to a year earlier. Once the seasonality and the calendar effect are discounted, the figure also approaches the three million employed, and reaches 2,972,086 affiliates.

In this way, foreign workers account for 14.1% of the total contributors to the system, in both series.

Since the labour reform of 2022, the weight of the foreign population in our labour market has grown remarkably: 41% of the employment created in these last three years corresponds to workers of foreign origin.

There are 1.4 million foreign affiliates more than ten years ago, in 2015, which represents an increase of 84.6%, and 118% in the case of people from non-EU countries. Growth among EU citizens has also been significant, with 56.5%.
“The affiliation of foreigners also shows the good symptoms that we see in the labor market as a whole: temporality falls to historical lows and the sectors that grow above the average, such as those with high added value, are diversified,” explains Minister Elma Saiz.

Among the activities that have experienced growth of sharp foreigners higher than the average since 2018 in the system as a whole, Information and Communications stands out, in addition to Construction, Transport and Hospitality.

General regime

In line with the situation of native workers, 84% of foreign affiliates were covered by the General Social Security System, reaching 2,580,639 workers. 
In the last 12 months, the affiliation of foreign people in this regime has grown by about 6.8% and in seven sectors it does so especially: Transportation and Storage (25.4%), Water Supply (10.5%), Administrative Activities (9%), Financial Activities (8.9%), Construction (8.6%) and Manufacturing Industry (8.6%).
The distribution by sector in both the General System and Self-Employed Workers shows a growing diversification. For example, the year-on-year growth in the membership of foreigners is very remarkable in activities with high added value, where a notable growth is observed, as mentioned, in Financial Activities (8.9%), Scientific and Technical Professional Activities (7%) and Information and Communications (5.7%). 
31% are workers from countries of the European Union. Of all nationalities, Morocco tops the list of countries from which the largest number of contributors comes, followed by Romania, Colombia, Italy, Venezuela and China.
Of the total number of affiliated persons from other countries: 1.7 million are men and 1.3 million are women, which means that the number of women members stands at 43.5% of the total number of foreign workers, a figure that is increasing.
As for the temporality, its rate is at historical lows both in the group of nationals and in that of foreigners. In fact, the percentage of foreign affiliates with a temporary contract is 11.3% and that of nationals, 12%.

In particular, the affiliation of foreign self-employed workers reached an historic peak in May: 484,062 people, 6.5% more than a year ago. “We see that foreign workers are increasingly betting on our country to start their business and thus become generators of employment,” says Saiz.
The momentum is especially visible in highly skilled sectors. In the last year, the number of foreign self-employed has increased by 31.9% in Information and Communications and 17.7% in Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities.

Additional information in Excel and on the web: 
https://w6.seg-social.es/PXWeb/pxweb/es