The shadow of job destruction due to automation that the arrival of AI promised has been hanging over the labor market since companies like Anthropic, OpenAI or Google demonstrated that AI was much more than a chatbot to which you can ask everyday questions. The massive rounds of dismissal that were taking place in the big technology companies of Silicon Valley seemed like something distant that did not go with the Spanish labor market, until some experts asked themselves what real impact AI is having on employment in Spain.
He first study focused on the Spanish labor market has just shown that that distance from Silicon Valley was nothing more than an illusion. AI is here, is being adopted at an accelerated pace in Spanish companies and its effects on employment will begin to be noticeable in the coming years.
A tsunami called IA. The study ‘Artificial intelligence and the labor market in Spain: Occupational exposure, effects on employment and business adoption’, published by the Funcas study center and prepared by Francisco Rodríguez, director of Financial Studies at the foundation, quantifies for the first time the impact of AI on the labor market in Spain.
The research estimates that, between 2025 and 2035, AI could destroy between 1.7 and 2.3 million jobs in Spain. At the most optimistic end, the impact figure of AI drops to about 700,000 jobs. In their most pessimistic forecast, they could exceed a gross job destruction of up to 3.5 million jobs, a range that reflects the real uncertainty about how quickly AI will be implemented in companies.
Destroying is not the same as displacing. The study highlights that gross destruction is not the same as net destruction and the main difference is that, in absolute terms, there will be a displacement of employment, destroying employment in some sectors, to generate new vacancies in others. Therefore, this range of 1.7 to 2.3 million jobs does not mean that these workers will not have access to another job other than the one they held.
The creation of new occupations linked to AI could reach around 1.61 million positions in the 2023-2033 horizon, which would leave the estimated net loss in the central scenario at around 400,000 jobs. This displacement of employment remains in line with what the ‘Report on the future of employment 2025‘ prepared by the World Economic Forum.
Who is most exposed? The problem that the Funcas study reveals is that the positions that disappear and those that are created are not the same nor do they require the same training profile, so accessing new occupations requires a different training.
The bulk of this impact is concentrated on administrative, intermediate and senior technical profiles, profiles that perform repetitive tasks of information processing, document writing or data management. Something in which AI is demonstrating its best abilities. On the other hand, between 2.8 and 3.5 million workers will not see their jobs disappear, but will They will work more productively thanks to AI tools, doing more work in less time without your job disappearing.
Spain still depends a lot on physical employment. Spain also presents a somewhat particular position compared to its European neighbors regarding the impact of AI on its labor market due to the nature of the Spanish business fabric. The study places the real risk of automation in the Spanish labor market at 5.9%, well below the OECD average (12%).
This difference is explained by the greater weight of physical tasks in traditional professions in the Spanish economy, which are more difficult to automate. Even so, in terms of general exposure to AI, Spain stands at 27.4% compared to the OECD average of 26%.
In Spain, more and more work is being done with AI. In the first quarter of 2025, 21.1% of Spanish companies with ten or more employees already used at least one AI technologycompared to 12.4% who used it in 2023. This data represents a jump of 8.7 points in just two years. By sectors, technology companies are the ones that have most integrated the use of AI into their processes with 58.7%, followed by the Services sector (25.7%), Industry (17.5%) and, surprisingly, Construction (11.4%).
Companies that have integrated AI have an average productivity that is 27% higher than those that do not use this technology, although the report warns that the most productive companies They are also the most likely to adopt technology, so that difference cannot be attributed entirely to AI. “This acceleration is an indicator that the process of technological diffusion has reached a critical mass and that its effects on employment will begin to materialize in a perceptible way in the coming years,” says the Funcas report.
Image | Unsplash (Lala Azizli)
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