Non-Spanish national insurance contributors increased by 23,388 in March to an all-time-high of 2,785,473

Social Security registered 2,785,473 foreign affiliates in March after discounting seasonality and the calendar effect. This is the highest level of foreign contributors, with 23,388 having been added in the last month. Since February 2020 - before the impact of the pandemic - the system has recorded an increase of 596,052 workers from other countries.

This figure in March represents 13.2% of the total number of national insurance contributors, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Average contributors

In average terms and without seasonal adjustment, i.e. in the original series, Social Security registered 2,734,119 non-Spanish contributors, after adding 62,573 employed persons in March (2.3%) and 208,231 in the last twelve months (8.2%). It is also the month with the highest number of foreign contributors in average terms.

The percentage of foreign contributors out of the total number of national insurance contributors rises in the original series to 13.1%.

Of the total, 32.4% are workers from EU countries. The most numerous national groups are from Romania, Morocco, Colombia, Italy, Venezuela and China.

Of the total, around 1.5 million are men, and the number of women exceeds 1.2 million. Notably, the number of female non-Spanish contributors has grown by 30.5% since before the pandemic, 3.3 points more than men.

67,846 Ukrainian contributors

Among the various nationalities, there are 67,846 national insurance contributors from Ukraine. This is 20,587 more than in January 2022, prior to the start of the war, representing a growth of 43.6%.

The majority of workers (85.2%) coming from Ukraine are in the General System, i.e. they are salaried workers, and 14.8% are self-employed.

Systems and sectors

Overall, 83.7% of non-Spanish national insurance contributors were in the general scheme, with 2,287,519 workers, which is 2.5% higher than in January 2024.

In the last 12 months, ten sectors have grown by more than 10%. Hotels and Restaurants is the activity whose numbers have increased the most (13.9 %), followed by Electricity supply (11.1 %), Health Care Activities (10.9 %), Commerce (10.7 %), Administrative Activities (10.7 %), Financial Activities (10.3 %) and Arts, Entertainment and Recreation (10.1 %).

High added value activities

This year-on-year growth is also very notable in high value-added activities such as Information and Telecommunications, which increased by 8.9 %, and in Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities, with an increase over the last year of 7.4 %. Within these, Film activities (up almost 22 %), Architectural technical services (+14.2 %) and Programming (+12.3 %) stand out for their dynamism.

By activity, workers who are nationals of other countries account for more than 20% of the total number of members in Activities of Extra-territorial Organisations and Bodies (28.8%), Hotels and Restaurants (26.7%), Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry and Fishing (24.4%) and Construction (20.7%). In the Special Household System and the Special Agricultural System, 45.4% and 35.7%, respectively, are non-Spanish workers.

Meanwhile, the Self-Employed Scheme accounted for 441,594 contributors of other nationalities, i.e. 13.1% of the total number of these workers. In the last year, foreign contributors in this regime have increased in number by 7.1%.

Non official translation