The Spanish labor market begins every year with bad news, and this year is no exception. Between January and March 2025, 92,500 jobs were lost in Spain, and unemployment rose from 10.6% at the end of 2024 to 11.4% in the first quarter. These developments are reflected in data from the Active Population Survey (EPA), released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on Monday morning. In the first quarter, the number of employed people in Spain was 21.8 million. Although the unemployment rate is the highest since the first quarter of last year, it still represents the lowest figure for the beginning of a year since 2009.
The decline in employment at the beginning of the year is a typical feature of the Spanish economy and is strongly linked to the seasonal behavior of the service sector. In the hospitality sector, for example, the number of employed people fell by 143,000 between the first quarter of 2025 and the last quarter of 2024. However, with the good weather approaching and the market entering the bullish phase of the cycle, employment is expected to rise again.
Putting the labor market figures at the beginning of the year in relation to the usual conditions for this time of year, a less pessimistic picture emerges. Between January and March 2024, almost 140,000 jobs were lost, 47,000 fewer than in the recently concluded first phase of 2025.
Looking at the seasonally adjusted data, 160,000 new hires entered the labor market at the beginning of the year, which is the second-best figure for this statistic in the last year and a half. Over the past 12 months – measured using the algorithm used by the INE to adjust for seasonal effects – Spain has added a total of 520,000 new employees. Looking only at data from the private sector, this number rises to 567,000.
For the Ministry of Economy, the LFS data published on Monday show “the dynamism of the labor market, which maintains the pace of job creation and promotes more stable jobs and sectors with higher added value.”
