Spain: Robust employment gains but still meager productivity

Research evidence excerpt

Spain: Robust employment gains but still meager productivity

J P M O R G A N Europe Economic Research

29 July 2026

Spain: Robust employment gains

but still meager productivity

• Employment growth in EPA picks-up to 2.2%ar in 2Q, though this is less Economic and Policy Research

than we had expected Mariana Monteiro

• The release leaves our Euro area level employment tracker at 0.7%ar, in (44mariana.reispaivamonteiro@jpmorgan.com20) 3493-5147

line with our forecast J.P. Morgan Securities plc

• Immigration remains a major source of labour supply

• Productivity has likely remained weak

Spain’s statistical institute (INE) published its 2Q Economically Active

Population Survey (EPA) yesterday. While EPA employment can differ from

national accounts measures and social security data, it remains a useful gauge of

recent labour market momentum. The key point is that tomorrow’s national

accounts employment release may come in slightly weaker than we have been

tracking. If so, our Euro area level tracker would signal employment growth of

0.7%ar in 2Q, up from 0.3%ar in 1Q. This would be broadly consistent with our

0.75%ar forecast, though imply a more modest pick-up in job gains than our prior

0.9%ar tracking. Other takeaways are below.

Employment growth picked up, but undershot our tracking. Employment rose

2.2%ar in 2Q, up from 1.8%ar in 1Q. This is nonetheless below our 3.4%ar tracking

based on Social Security-covered employment; we suspect the latter may have

been boosted by government measures to regularise immigrants who were already

working. If tomorrow’s national account employment data print in line with EPA,

our Euro area employment tracker would be pulled down to around 0.7%ar,

broadly in line with our forecast. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.3%,