The foreign population in Spain shows better employment rates than the native population. The foreign population has an employment rate of almost 12 percentage points higher than the Spanish population, which means that two out of three foreigners residing in Spain are employed, while within the Spanish population, the ratio is one out of every two.

If this phenomenon is analysed in the autonomous communities, this tendency is repeated in every one with the exception of Ceuta and Melilla where the inverse occurs. Asturias presents a noteworthy case, where the difference between employment rates of both populations is 26 percentage points, that is to say, in Asturias, three out of every four are employed. Other communities that show a large difference are Aragon, Castile-La Mancha, Madrid, Galicia, Cantabria and Castile and León.

The study goes in-depth on the profile of the foreign population occupying Spain and emphasises several characteristics: One out of every five foreigners in Spain has a professional university education (20.5%) and 56% of the foreign population has an upper level of secondary school education or higher. Comparing the education of the foreign population with the education of the Spanish population, it can be said that “their levels of education are high and in line with the data from the national population,” González emphasised.

The work also highlights that impatriated workers from non-European Union countries could make up 20% of the foreigners with residency permits in Spain. Spain is also situated at the forefront of the most fiscally attractive countries for foreign executives.