The tourism sector closes the year with 2.9 million people employed, 9.7% more than in 2023

Employment in tourism closed the year with a positive trend. In the last quarter of 2024, the sector recorded 2,936,697 employed workers, an increase of 9.7% compared to the same period in 2023, according to data published by Turespaña.

Between October and December 2024, tourism-related activities recorded 259,992 more employees than in the same quarter of the previous year. During this quarter, employees in the tourism sector accounted for 13.4% of total employment in the Spanish economy.

The percentage of unemployed people over people working in the field of tourism was 9% (2.3 percentage points less than in the same quarter of the previous year). The unemployment rate in tourism activities is still below the unemployment rate of the national economy (10.6%).

Growth in the number of employees

The main tourism activities experienced growth during the fourth quarter of the year. Hotels' and restaurants' business increased by 9.2%, due to the positive evolution of both accommodation services (13.1%) and food and beverage services (8%). In travel agencies the variation was 20.1%, while in passenger transport it was 11.4%.

The number of employees in the tourism sector during this period amounted to 2,449,999, which is a year-on-year increase of 10.8%. This continues the year-on-year increases, which have been seen during the previous 14 quarters. These numbers of employees demonstrated the increases in passenger transport (12.5%) and in hotels and restaurants (9.3%), as well as in other tourism activities (13.9%). In the case of hotels and restaurants, both accommodation and food and beverage services increased. Within other tourism activities, travel agencies experienced an increase of 29.6%. The employment rate (salaried/employed) was 83.4%, 0.8 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of the previous year.

Temporary employment continues to fall

Employees in the tourism sector on permanent contracts (85.5%) have increased by 13.4% year-on-year, representing the 40^th consecutive increase. Furthermore, employees with temporary contracts recorded a decrease of 2.3%.

In this sense, the temporary employment rate (employees on temporary contracts/total employees) in the tourism sector was 14.5%, which is a lower figure than for the same period in the previous year (16.5%). In terms of working hours, full-time employees accounted for 75.4% of all employees, a 13% increase. The number of part-time employees grew by 4.8% and accounted for 24.6%.

The number of self-employed workers in the tourism sector rose to 486,271, an increase of 4.5% compared to the same period of the previous year, with increases in hotels and catering (9%) and passenger transport (7.7%), and a decrease in other tourism activities (-11.3%).

The Community of Valencia and Madrid, the fastest-growing regions

In terms of territorial distribution, increases in the number of employed people were observed in practically all the autonomous communities.

The Valencian Community is the region with the highest growth in the number of employed people, with a year-on-year variation rate of +21.5%. In second place is the Community of Madrid, which increased by 17.9%; and in third place, Catalonia, with 15.3% more employed people than in the same period of the previous year. As usual, the autonomous communities with the greatest number of tourist flows (Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Andalusia, the Community of Valencia and the Community of Madrid) are, in turn, those that generate the most jobs in the sector, together accounting for 75.9% of the total number of people employed in the tourism sector during the fourth quarter.

Non official translation