Spanish workers lose 2.3 billion euros to unpaid overtime work in 2025

Nearly half a million Spanish workers did 2.5 million hours per week of unpaid overtime work in 2025. This has led to employers profiting 2.3 billion euros that their workers should have received throughout the year. The total cost for the country, including wages, social security and taxes, was 3.2 billion euros.

The new working day register promoted by Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz should put an end to this type of workers' exploitation, but the internal division within the government and the uncertainty over constitutional validity of this regulation have delayed its approval.

Specifically, a total of 441,000 workers did 2.5 million hours of unpaid overtime per week, according to a report published on Monday by the economic bureau of the CC OO union, with data taken from the labour force survey (Epa) of the National Institute of Statistics.

A total of 160,000 full-time jobs would have been necessary to complete the unpaid overtime hours in 2025.

"This is a form of labour exploitation that has persisted for decades and which has not been significantly reduced in recent years, despite the adoption of specific regulations such as the mandatory registration of working hours," the CC OO union states.

Almost one million workers (945,000) did overtime every week in 2025 (five per cent of all employees). Almost half of them did not receive any compensation in the form of pay or rest. In other words, 2.3 per cent of the wage-earning population worked unpaid overtime per week.

The total of overtime hours last year was 6.38 million hours, 39 per cent of which were unpaid.