Why Spain needs millions more migrants, not less

Amid anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Spanish far-right in recent weeks, a new report has highlighted that Spain will need millions more migrants in key economic sectors in the future.

The leader of Spain's far-right party Vox, Santiago Abascal, last week downplayed reports that the party intends to deport 8 million foreigners, including second-generation migrants born in Spain. This followed controversial comments from party spokesperson Rocío de Meer's comments that Vox wants to deport "8 million people".

Faced with a growing media frenzy in the left-leaning Spanish press, Abascal shrugged off de Meer's claims and distanced his party from the idea of 'mass re-emigration' because in his words they “simply don’t know” how many migrants there actually are in Spain.

Figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute show that there are currently 6.9 million foreigners residing in Spain, less than the 8 million named by De Meer, but a closer look at her words and the party’s nativist rhetoric clarify that she was also probably counting foreigners who’ve acquired Spanish citizenship, as hardline elements within Vox doesn’t consider them to be truly Spanish.

The debacle has sparked widespread debate about immigration, especially in the future, and the evidence suggests that Spain actually needs more immigrants, not less, according to a whole host of international organisations, banks and financial publications.

Just last week, the OECD laid bare Spain’s need for more migration in the future. The organisation recommended that Spain increase regular immigration and reactivate older workers in the labour market to ensure economic growth in the face of the expected population decline and demographic ageing.

The OECD report highlighted that Spain, like many member countries, will be affected by a “sharp decline” in the working-age population in the coming decades and needs migrant labour to reinforce the economy.

Forecasts suggest that Spain will experience “the largest decline” in the employment rate relative to the population among OECD countries, with a drop of 10.3 percentage points by 2060, compared to an average of 2 percent for the OECD as a whole.

This decline, due to the combination of Spain's low fertility rate and high (and rising) life expectancy, will mean that the number of elderly people per person of working age will rise from 0.34 in 2023 to 0.75 in 2060.

The Spanish pension system has long been a concern in Spain. A study by the Bank of Spain last year estimated that the country will need up to 25 million more immigrant workers by 2053 in order to combat demographic ageing and maintain the ratio of workers to pensioners in order to support the pension system. Without an influx of further foreign workers or sudden increase in the birth rate in Spain, something that seems very unlikely, experts fear that the growing disparity between working age people and pensioners could put the public pensions system in danger in the medium to long-term.

Put simply: Spain will need millions of migrants in the coming decades to stimulate the economy and pay into the pensions system for a generation of Spaniards set to retire in the near future.

Migrant workforce

Contrary to right-wing rhetoric that suggests some immigrants don’t work and rely on welfare, experts say migrants in Spain work especially hard. “One of the positive effects of migration flows is that they bring workers with very high activity rates, clearly above other countries in our region,” José Luis Escrivá, governor of the Bank of Spain, said recently at a conference on migrant workers and their role in the Spanish economy.

This activity rate — that is, foreign workers who are employed or looking for work — reached 78 percent in 2024 in Spain compared to 74.4 percent in Germany, 70.7 percent in France and 71.1 percent in Italy, according to Eurostat data cited by Escrivá.

Immigration has contributed 84 percent of the growth of the Spanish population since 2022. With an increase of 1.5 million in the last two years, of which only 300,000 were Spanish nationals and 1.2 million were foreigners, the majority have joined the labour market, contributing “to expanding the supply [of workers], alleviating labour shortages and boosting economic growth” according to a report by the European Central Bank (ECB), released in May.

Spain without immigrants

Though Vox's proposal was absurd and a near impossibility administratively-speaking, as a thought experiment Spanish daily El Diario has envisaged the sort of country Spain would be without its migrant workforce.

In a long article headlined “The consequences of deporting millions of immigrants, according to Vox: broken lives and damage to economic growth and pensions” the right-leaning paper analyses how Vox’s mass re-emigration plans would be a serious blow to key sectors of the Spanish economy that rely heavily on foreign workers, which would then have a knock-on effect on the wider economy.

According to Social Security registration data from 2024, the sector in Spain that employs the most foreign workers is hospitality, with almost half a million workers, accounting for 27 percent of its workforce.

Construction follows, with 20 percent of its workforce coming from abroad. According to the latest data from the INE's Labour Force Survey (EPA), which also includes working people in irregular immigration situations – and not only those registered in the social security – the proportion of foreign workers in construction is even higher than that figure in reality, at almost 25 percent.

In agriculture, foreign workers officially account for 25.5 percent, according to the EPA, though it is a sector in which there are many cases of informal work and undocumented migrants.

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