Big business drives Malaga jobs growth as small firms struggle with costs
Just 0.3% of the province's companies account for 50% of new hires as rising costs and red tape deter smaller employers from expandin
Despite accounting for a smaller portion of Malaga's productive fabric, the province's large companies were ahead of SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) in terms of growth rates and hiring last year.
Malaga province has 59,142 companies, according Social Security statistics, which only include registered companies. Of these, 50,405 (85%) have fewer than ten employees. Meanwhile, only 175 companies in the province have 250 workers or more, although they are the ones leading the way in terms of growth, while smaller companies are stagnant.
In January 2026, there were 536,651 people employed in companies registered with Social Security, 32,284 more than in January 2025. Of the new hires, 16,622, joined companies with more than 250 workers, while only 4,454 joined companies with fewer than ten employees.
Following the largest companies, those with between ten and 49 employees registered the second highest growth (8,322 employees). After them came companies with between 100 and 249 employees, with 2,734 new workers. Companies with 50-99 workers registered the lowest growth, with only 152 new employees.
The companies that represent 85% of the productive fabric of Malaga were responsible for only 13.8% of the new hires; while the large companies, which only represent 0.3% of the companies in the province, were responsible for half of the new jobs created.
It is also worth mentioning the employment rates in each segment. While employment grew by 6%, the rise among those with fewer than ten workers was half that, barely 3%. At the same time, the increase recorded among companies with a workforce of over 250 workers was double the average (13%).
Once again, companies with between 50 and 99 employees were at the bottom, with the smallest relative growth.
Executive Deputy President of Confederación de Empresarios de Málaga Natalia Sánchez blames the bureaucratic burden and the increase in wage and social costs for the slowdown in employment among smaller companies.
According to her, this does not allow them to move further in their digitalisation and prevents them from getting to over 50 employees, as the administrative burden for companies with more than 50 employees is much greater.
"If the self-employed already have problems with paperwork, because they spend four hours a week on bureaucracy, one more employee is an additional problem."
President of the association of the self-employed Rafael Amor has addressed the challenges that the self-employed face. A survey reveals that, if there are 142,500 self-employed people in the province, 20,000 of them have employees. "If the self-employed already have problems with paperwork, because they spend four hours a week on bureaucratic matters, one more employee is an additional problem," he says.
Currently, 60% of the self-employed are not planning on hiring anyone this year and 5.7% are even considering making redundancies. "Labour costs are brutal: a worker at the SMI [minimum wage] already costs the employer around 1,900 euros in total," Amor says.
According to him, the self-employed are also having problems finding workers: 16.4% looked for staff last year, but did not find them, and another 12% say they have taken longer than usual to make their latest hires.
60% of the self-employed
have no plans of hiring anyone this year
This behaviour of employment by company size runs parallel to the very composition of the productive fabric. The total number of companies in the province has risen by 3% from one year to the next, while those with up to ten employees have barely grown by 2%; those with between 50 and 99 employees have remained frozen at 674; those with more than 250 employees have increased by 9%.
What is happening in Malaga is no different from what is happening in Andalucía as a whole. While the number of new employees in the region grew by 131,616 between January 2025 and January 2026, more than 80,000 (60%) of them joined companies of more than 250 employees.
Sánchez has pointed out that Malaga is actually an exception in terms of business dynamism in Spain: the productive fabric in the province continues growing. According to a Cepyme report, by the middle of last year the number of micro-SMEs (companies with fewer than ten workers) had fallen by 2% in Spain compared to 2019.
