Tuesday, 2 December 2025, 12:00
Spain is ageing at a rapid pace, faster than any other country apart from Korea and Italy. Starting from this year, the country will experience a sharp drop in skilled workers for a decade, if the number of migrants does not increase. Neither young Spanish nationals, nor the current number of foreigners can make up for the wave of retirees of the baby boom generation. The lack of generational replacement will leave a massive gap in the labour market, with a peak over the next decade.
Only the major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona will manage to fill the jobs that will be left vacant by Spain’s elders. Most other regions, however, will experience a labour shortage in skilled professions, as BBVA Research and Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada (Fedea) warned on Monday at the presentation of their new quarterly report on the labour market.
The map of ageing Spain does not correspond to the map of migrant Spain. That is to say, the regions with the greatest number of elderly people are not those with the greatest weight of immigration. Quite the opposite: “There is no real compensation. There is no possibility of replacement in the older regions (such as Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León…). Immigration has not yet compensated for the problem,” associate researcher Florentino Felgueroso said.
40%
of university professors are over 55 years of age and only 10% are non-native speakers
The study shows an insufficient replacement rate in the most qualified profiles. The number of active Spaniards under 30 with higher education for every active 55+ Spaniard with higher education has fallen from 3.5 on average between 2000 and 2010 to one between 2018 and 2024. “We are going to have to replace our doctors, economists, lawyers, no matter how much artificial intelligence there is,” Felgueroso stated, while advocating better working conditions to attract foreign talent.
Half of the foreigners are in senior jobs, while young Spaniards opt for newer jobs
There are not enough immigrants arriving to fill jobs where there are gaps. Those who do come go to regions with a younger population rather than to areas with greater demographic pressure. The immigrants already in the country are getting older just as the new arrivals are themselves older.
Then, there is the fact that there are fewer and fewer young people in Spain due to the low birth rate. In addition, they choose newer and, so to say, ‘modern’ jobs, unlike retirees that work in more traditional fields that have existed for decades. Many young people also choose to migrate within the country, moving to more populated regions, where generational replacement is not as critical.
Highly ageing sectors
Although a good part of immigrants (half of the total) enter the labour market in fields with a high number of retirees, that cannot make up for the lack of young Spaniards that choose those jobs.
What are the fastest ageing sectors in Spain? One is self-employed commerce, which lacks both young people and immigrants. Another example is the academic field, where 40% of university professors are over 55 years of age and only 10% are non-native speakers. At the same time, the Church benefits from a 50% replacement rate thanks to foreign priests.