Spain closed 2025 with more than 3.1 million foreign contributors to Social Securityand with a growing weight of immigration in job creation. Official data not only show that a good part of the new work generated in Spain is being filled with labor from other countries, but also that the nationality of these new affiliates is also changing.
In 2025, Venezuelans have become the nationality that has grown the most in new foreign affiliations to Social Security, above Colombians. This means that they lead the increase in registrations during the last year, but they are not the largest group if we look at the total number of foreign affiliates, a place that continues to be occupied by workers from Morocco and Romania.
Record number of foreign affiliates in 2025. According to December 2025 dataSocial Security registered 3,135,581 foreign affiliates after adjusting for calendar and seasonality, which represents more than 800,000 contributors than before the labor reform and almost a million more than those registered before the pandemic.
This increase implies that the workers of foreign origin They contributed 40.4% of the total new affiliations to Social Security. That is, just over four out of every ten new contributors in 2025 were of foreign nationality. Its weight within the whole labor market has also strengthenedand foreigners already represent 14.12% of the total members, six tenths more than in 2024.
“The 2025 balance shows that the contribution of foreign people is structural and decisive for employment growth, the sustainability of the pension system and the shared prosperity of our country,” said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz. in a statement.
Venezuelans: the nationality that is growing the most. Within this general increase, the Venezuelan community is the one that concentrates the largest increase in new foreign affiliates in 2025. workers arriving from Venezuela They formalized 40,614 new affiliations compared to those registered in 2024, adding a total of 215,735 Venezuelans. This represents an annual growth of 23.2% and places them as the group that has registered the most new registrations in Social Security in the last year.
This jump places Venezuelans in 19.8% of the total new registrations of foreign people, so that almost one in every five new affiliations of immigrants was workers. from Venezuela.
The figure consolidates an upward trend that has been observed for almost a decade, but marks a turning point in 2025 by becoming for the first time the nationality that has grown the most in relative terms, placing itself ahead of Colombians who also marked a historical rise.
Colombians: more numerous but with less growth. Although Venezuelans have led the increase in new memberships, Colombians remain the largest community in terms of total memberships.
At the end of 2025, the system registered around 250,248 Colombian workers, compared to the 212,319 registered in 2024. This represents an increase of 28,929 new members, leaving a growth of 13% compared to last year.
Colombians are the largest Latin American nationality in Spain, at least in terms of employment, but they remain behind the 373,000 affiliates from Morocco and the more than 330,000 from Romaniawhich are the most numerous nationalities in terms of affiliation of foreign workers.
Key support for the labor market. According to Ministry data, the weight of foreign workers is especially concentrated in sectors where the demand for labor is more intense, such as hospitality (28.8%), agriculture (26%) or construction (23.2%). In these areas, immigrants represent a very relevant part of the workforce and help sustain activity in campaigns and work peaks.
At the end of 2025, foreign self-employed workers reached 496,888, marking a historical maximum and growing 6.3% year-on-year. The greatest growth of these new self-employed workers has been registered in the Information and communications sectors (25.9%) and in Energy Supply (22%).
Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, Callum Hill)
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