This is the highest level of foreign affiliates in the seasonally adjusted historical series.

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Foreign workers exceed 2.7 million in January,

Social Security registered 2,736,169 foreign affiliates in January, after discounting seasonality and the calendar effect. This is the highest level of contributors of foreign origin, after adding 24,056 affiliates in the last month. Since February 2020, before the impact of the pandemic, the system has recorded an increase of 546,748 workers from other countries.

Graph of the evolution of foreign affiliates.

This figure represents 13.1% of total Social Security affiliates in January in seasonally adjusted terms.

Average enrollment
In average terms and without seasonal adjustment, i.e. in the original series, Social Security recorded 2,631,593 foreign affiliates this month, after adding 196,034 employed persons in the last twelve months, which represents an increase of 8.1%. The percentage of foreign workers over the total number of persons affiliated with Social Security rises in the original series to 12.8%. Concerning December, there are 37,183 fewer affiliates.

Of the total, 852,163 workers come from European Union countries (32.4%) and 1,779,430 from third countries (67.6%). The largest groups of workers are from Romania (328,464), Morocco (318,750), Italy (173,458), Colombia (174,388) and Venezuela (146,469). Of the total, 56.2% are men and 43.8% are women.

65,511 Ukrainian members
Among other nationalities, there are 65,511 members from Ukraine. This is 18,252 more than in January 2022, when the war had not yet started, representing a growth of 38.62%.

Most of the workers from Ukraine, about 85.7%, are in the General Regime (salaried employees) and 14.3% are self-employed.

Regimes and sectors
Overall, 83.4% of foreign affiliates were in the General Regime, with 2,196,041 workers, which is 8.4% higher than in January 2024. In the last 12 months, ten sectors of activity have grown by more than 10 per cent. Hotels and restaurants are the sector that has added the most (13.7%), followed by Construction (11.8%), Health Care Activities (11.5%) and Scientific and Technical Activities (10.8%) and Financial Activities (10.8%). On the other hand, it only fell in Activities and Organizations and Extra-territorial Organizations (-0.2%), in the special Agricultural system (-0.9%) and remained practically unchanged in Households.

As for the monthly evolution, it shows a behavior similar to those of the January series, with decreases in most sectors.

For its part, the Self-Employed Regime registered 431,345 foreign affiliates. Of the total number of self-employed workers, 14.8% came from China, 11% from Romania and 8.8% from Italy.