Reported by the Consejeros Editorial Team
A few weeks ago, the General Council of Economists of Spain (CGE) and the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea) held a conference dedicated to the impact of migration on the Spanish economy, as part of their series on Structural Issues in the Spanish Economy.
Several speakers took part in the session, presenting different papers and perspectives on the topic. Pilar Cuadrado Salinas, a specialist in Quantitative Analysis and Economic Information Management at the Bank of Spain, explained that Spain is currently the country contributing most to population growth in the European Union thanks to immigration. Specifically, she noted that “in 2024, despite accounting for approximately 11 per cent of the EU’s population, Spain accounted for nearly half of the population growth recorded across the EU as a whole”. She also presented an estimate of immigration’s contribution to economic growth, according to which, between 2022 and 2025, the immigrant population contributed approximately 1.7 percentage points to average annual GDP growth (3.7 per cent) and 0.5 percentage points to average annual GDP per capita growth (2.7 per cent).
Cuadrado pointed out that “in addition to its demographic impact, immigration has had a significant impact on GDP and GDP per capita growth. However, the positive relationship between immigration and economic growth is highly complex and requires an economic analysis that goes beyond a simple mechanical breakdown and takes into account both the determinants and the effects of immigration”.
The second presentation was given by Ismael Gálvez Iniesta, a lecturer in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), who reviewed the profound demographic transformation experienced by Spain over recent decades. In this regard, the expert explained that “updating his research with data for the period 2014–2024 shows results that differ from those observed during the period 2005–2013, which highlights that the economic effects of immigration evolve over time and depend on both the economic context and the composition of migration flows”.
Gálvez stated that “Spain has undergone one of the most profound demographic transformations in Europe: the foreign population has risen from 2 per cent in 1990 to 18.5 per cent in 2024”. He added that “the available economic evidence for Spain points to moderate and, on the whole, positive effects on native employment. However, these effects vary according to workers’ educational level and skills: when immigrants and native-born workers compete for the same jobs, the pressure on employment and wages is greater, whilst when they specialise in different and complementary occupations, native-born workers tend to benefit”.
