Colombians are leading the ‘boom’ in new foreign workers following regularisation

And this is only just the beginning, as the extraordinary regularisation scheme approved by the Government has already added 160,000 new Social Security contributors in just two months, a major milestone that has pushed the number of foreign workers above 3.4 million for the first time and will almost certainly break the 3.5 million barrier this summer.

But just as the Spanish labour market is changing, foreign employment is also undergoing its own ‘upheaval’. Consequently, the profile of the migrant worker has shifted in recent years, and it is no longer Moroccans, Romanians or Venezuelans who are leading the ‘boom’ in foreign social security enrolment, but Colombians, whose numbers have soared by 30 per cent over the past year, tripling their share in just five years and leading the way in job creation resulting from regularisation, accounting for one in five new contributors, according to figures published recently by the ministry of inclusion, social security and migration.

The growth in the Colombian community stands out not only for its speed, but also for its scale. No other nationality has seen such a large increase in the number of workers since 2021: more than 222,000 new members, a figure that now places Colombia just 37,500 contributors behind Romania, the second-largest foreign community, which, by contrast, is losing momentum in a market it led until last year.

Venezuela and Peru are also contributing to this growth, in a process that is giving the new Spanish labour market a distinctly Latin American character.

Overall, the number of members from this region has risen by more than 110,000 between April and June this year, coinciding precisely with the extraordinary immigration regularisation programme launched by Pedro Sánchez’s government. In other words, more than half of the new foreign contributors now come from Latin America.

Colombia alone accounts for more than a third of that increase, but it is not the only country to have seen such growth. Venezuela now has around 240,000 members, 2.5 times more than five years ago, whilst Peru has also tripled its number of contributors, exceeding 122,000. Together, these three nationalities account for nearly 679,000 workers, a figure that brings them ever closer to the combined total of Morocco and Romania, the two largest national groups dominating foreign membership.

The turnaround in the statistics has reached historic proportions: the number of contributors of Latin American nationalities has now exceeded the total number of European workers registered in Spain. The former number 1.23 million contributors, whilst the latter number 1.20 million.

This picture is very different from that of the national labour market prior to the pandemic. In 2019, the number of workers born in Europe still outnumbered those from Latin America by around 450,000. Since then, workers from countries on the other side of the Atlantic have accounted for nearly 690,000 new entrants, compared with around 210,000 from Europe.

The special regularisation scheme has further accelerated a trend that had been building for months. Between May and June alone, Latin American countries gained around 64,000 new members, compared with just over 3,000 from Europe. In other words, employment in Latin America grew more than 20 times faster than in Europe in a single month.

Within Latin America, too, there is a shift taking place in the leading nations. Ecuador, which for years was one of the region’s main sources of workers in the Spanish labour market, still has 80,202 registered workers, but has made little progress since 2019. In contrast, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru have seen a surge that has reshaped the landscape in the space of just five years.

By contrast, the countries of Eastern Europe are experiencing a decline: the exodus of Romanians that has been taking place since 2012 is now being joined by that of Bulgarians, who, paradoxically, have seen their numbers fall by 616 workers, over the last two months, coinciding with the regularisation process; should this trend continue, it will result in a loss of labour in the key sectors where they were employed.

However, the regularisation process is already helping to alleviate the labour shortage that Spain has been experiencing in recent years, and at just the right time, as businesses prepare for the summer season and face their busiest recruitment period of the year.

Consequently, the majority of these immigrants have gone on to fill vacancies in the hospitality and retail sectors, where 38,776 and 20,195 people have been employed respectively, although more than 19,300 have moved into administrative roles and 18,310 into the construction sector, which is in such dire need of labour.