The number of people employed in the tourism sector has risen by 7.7% from a year ago, reaching almost 2.75 million

Postcards of tourist attractions in Spain

Between January and March 2024, tourism-related activities registered 197,630 more employees than in the same quarter of the previous year, representing one out of every four jobs created during that period in the Spanish economy as a whole (797,000). In other words, 24.8 % of new jobs have come from tourism-related activities. Meanwhile, the number of active workers in the tourism sector in the first quarter of the year surpassed three million (3,171,827), 6.6% more than in the same period last year.

Moreover, the percentage of unemployed people among the active working population in the tourism sector was 13.2%, a lower figure than for the same quarter of the previous year, meaning three consecutive year-on-year quarterly declines.

"For some months, tourism employment has been undergoing a paradigm shift, in line with the rest of the tourism sector: more employees, more salaried workers, more permanent contracts and more full-time workers: in short, more and better jobs to care for and reinforce the social sustainability of tourism, one of our key objectives for the present and the future", said the Minister for Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu.

Temporary employment rate falls

In this first quarter, the main tourism activities have experienced growth. Hotels and restaurants increased by 10%, due to positive developments in both food and beverage services (12.1%) and accommodation services (2.9%). In passenger transport, the year-on-year rise was by 14.6%, and only travel agencies reported negative growth (-12.7%).

The main growth in the first quarter was among salaried employees (7.8%), reaching a total of 2,264,942. There was also an increase in the numbers of salaried employees in passenger transport (14.4%) and hotels and restaurants (11.3%). Furthermore, the number of employees in the tourism sector with permanent contracts (85.3%), one of the variables that point to the improvement in the quality of employment in the sector, has increased by 10.7%, which is the eleventh consecutive increase. Furthermore, employees with temporary contracts recorded a decrease of 6.4%.

The temporary employment rate in the tourism sector was 14.7%, a lower figure than for the same period of the previous year (16.9%). The temporary employment rate in the tourism sector is therefore one percentage point below the temporary employment rate of the Spanish economy, which for this quarter stood at 15.7%.

In terms of working hours, full-time employees accounted for 73.8% of all employees, a 6.7% increase. The percentage of self-employed workers increased by 7.5% compared to the same period in 2023, reaching 487,743 workers in this group.

Extremadura and Catalonia, the fastest-growing regions

The autonomous communities that registered the highest number of employed people from January to March were Catalonia (537,952 employed people and a year-on-year growth of 25.6%), Madrid (444,533, and an increase of 3.9%), Andalusia (409,233, and a growth of 2.3%) and Valencia (276,817, and an increase of 11.2%).

In this period, the unemployment figure increased in all the autonomous communities, except for the Canary Islands, Castile and Leon, Cantabria, Navarre and La Rioja. Contrarily, the autonomous communities where employment figures increased most were Extremadura, with a year-on-year growth of 32.4%, Catalonia, with 25.6%, and Aragon, with 21.8%.

Non official translation