Malaga has same number of unemployed as in 2008: what, if anything, has improved?
It is the province with the highest growth in employment and the largest active workforce in all of Spain, so why does its unemployment rate remain stagnant?
In July Malaga reached a historic milestone by falling below 110,000 unemployed. It had not been below this threshold since July 2008, on the eve of the huge economic and financial crisis, the beginning of which came to be known as Black September as the financial institution of Lehman Brothers went into liquidation. In the following years, Malaga province suffered a vertical rise in unemployment that more than doubled its unemployment rate. The all-time high was reached in 2014, with 210,000 people on the SAE list (the Andalusian employment service), which is no mean feat. Since then, a slow downward curve began that continues today, with Malaga still unable to break the 100,000-unemployed barrier. Now it is closer than ever, but it is unlikely to reach it this summer, as in August it is not out of the question that unemployment will rise. This has been the case for many years given that, at the end of this month, many temporary contracts in hotels and beach bars come to an end.
The fact is that, by July 2025, Malaga has equalled the number of registered unemployed that it had in July 2008: just over 108,000. Does this mean that these recent years of economic boom and the emergence of new employment niches, such as the technology sector, have served only to bring us back to square one? The answer is no: a lot has changed in Malaga's labour market in these last almost 20 years, although it is also true that the jobs market has endured certain structural problems ever since.
The main difference can be summarised in the fact that, back in 2008, Malaga had around 110,000 unemployed compared to a much smaller population; that is to say, its percentage of the population that was unemployed was higher at that time. In proportional terms, Malaga is the province in Spain with the third largest population gain in the last 15 to 17 years. Even more importantly, it is the province that has created the most jobs in the same period. In July 2009 there were 499,000 workers registered with the general and self-employed Social Security schemes in the province, now there are more than 726,000, meaning an increase in the working population of almost 46%.
Unemployment rate: stagnating at 13%
The labour market in Malaga has expanded dramatically: both in terms of demand and supply. That is why, by comparison, there is less unemployment than before. In fact, the unemployment rate was 16% in 2008 and is now 13%. The labour market has also been diversified, with sectors such as technology and transportation now playing a major role after rapid growth over the last five years.
At the same time, it is also true that the tertiarisation of the economy and employment has intensified: the services sector has increased its share of total employment by ten points, going from generating 74% to 84% of employment in the province. It has done so primarily at the expense of the construction industry, which in 2008 was still very oversized, accounting for 15% of employment and now representing half that. Industry, which was already weak in Malaga (7.7%), is now even more so (5.8%), leaving Malaga very much anchored to the bottom rung of the industrial ladder for employment. Lastly, agriculture barely gets a mention in terms of its share in the employment data: 2.2% of the total.
The same old problems
Despite the undeniable dynamism of its economy and labour market, Malaga's major problem is the persistence of a pool of entrenched unemployment, made up of people who have been out of work for a long time and who, in many cases, lack a sufficient level of employability to reintegrate into the labour market. Of the province's more than 108,000 unemployed, almost 67,000 (some two-thirds) have been out of work for more than a year. Approximately half of these have been unemployed for more than two years.
Underlying this problem are the same old issues that plague Malaga's economy (seasonality, high dependence on tourism, low industrial presence, fragmentation of the productive fabric) and its labour market (a significant part of the working-age population with low-level qualifications). In recent years, this pool of long-term unemployment has coexisted with the shortage of professionals, which has been the focus of warnings from sectors as diverse as technology, construction and hospitality.
