Cepyme, the employers’ association for small and medium-sized enterprises, warns of a 29% increase in labor costs for small businesses since 2019. It also cautions about further closures and layoffs in micro-enterprises if the conflict in Iran persists.
Between the first quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2025—a five-year period—the statutory minimum wage (SMI) in Spain grew by 22.7%, rising from €965 to €1,184 (paid in fourteen installments). During that same period, labour costs for small and medium-sized enterprises increased by 28.7%, according to Cepyme’s calculations. However, the pressure exerted on small businesses by the minimum wage hike goes even further, having risen by 66% since 2019 and by 86% over the last decade since 2016.
A direct consequence of this increase in burdens is that, over the last six years, the productive landscape has seen the destruction of 13,350 small businesses (micro-enterprises)—at the end of 2025, there were 692,231 registered companies with one to two employees. If we take into account the latest available Social Security figures from March of the current fiscal year, the destruction of these small businesses amounts to 16,223. In this period from 2021 to March 2026, there has also been the closure of 1,603 companies with three to five employees.
These figures contrast with the general trend and highlight the suffocation of the smallest segment of the productive sector, driven both by labor costs and production costs forced up by inflation, which has been especially intense in recent years. Consequently, since the end of 2019, the operating costs of SMEs have grown by 25%, according to the Cepyme Indicator on the situation of SMEs for the second half of last year.
