In the fourth quarter of 2024, there are 259,992 more employees in tourism activities than in the same quarter of 2023.
Tourism employment closes the year consolidating its positive trend. In the last quarter of 2024, the sector has registered 2,936,697 employed workers, an increase of 9.7% over the same period of 2023, according to data published by Turespaña.
Between October and December 2024, tourism-related activities registered 259,992 more employees than in the same quarter of the previous year. Employees in the tourism sector in this period accounted for 13.4% of total employment in the Spanish economy.
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The tourism sector closes the year with 2.9 million employees, 9.7% more than in 2023
The percentage of unemployed over active workers in tourism activities was 9% (2.3 percentage points less than in the same quarter of the previous year). The percentage of unemployment in tourism activities continues to be below the unemployment rate of the national economy (which is 10.6%).
Growth in the number of employees
In the fourth quarter of the year, the main tourism activities have experienced growth. In hotels and restaurants, the number of employees increased by 9.2%, due to the positive evolution of both accommodation services (13.1%) and food and beverage services (8%). In travel agencies, the variation was 20.1%, while in passenger transportation it was 11.4%.
The number of salaried employees in tourism during this period totalled 2,449,999, a year-on-year increase of 10.8%. Thus, the year-on-year increases of the previous fourteen quarters continued. These employees showed increases in passenger transportation (12.5%) and in hotels and restaurants (9.3%), as well as in other tourism activities (13.9%). In hotels and restaurants, both accommodation services and food and beverage services increased. Within other tourism activities, travel agencies experienced an increase of 29.6%. The employment rate (employees/employed) was 83.4%, 0.8 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of the previous year.
Temporary employment continues to fall
Employees in the tourism sector with permanent contracts (85.5%) increased by 13.4% year-on-year, representing the 40th consecutive increase. On the other hand, employees with temporary contracts recorded a decrease of 2.3%.
In this sense, the temporary employment rate (employees with temporary contracts/total employees) in the tourism sector was 14.5%, a lower figure than in the same period of the previous year (16.5%). About the type of working day, full-time employees accounted for 75.4% of the total number of employees and increased by 13%. Part-time employees increased by 4.8% and accounted for 24.6%.
The number of self-employed in tourism rose to 486,271, an increase of 4.5% over the same period of the previous year, with increases in hotels and restaurants (9%) and passenger transport (7.7%) and a decrease in other tourism activities (-11.3%).
Valencia and Madrid, the regions with the highest growth rates
In terms of territorial distribution, practically all the autonomous communities recorded increases in the number of employed persons.
The Community of Valencia is the region with the highest growth in the number of employed, with a year-on-year variation rate of +21.5%. In second place was the Community of Madrid, with an increase of 17.9%, and in third place was Catalonia, with 15.3% more employees than in the same period of the previous year. As usual, the autonomous communities with the greatest number of tourist flows (Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Andalusia, the Community of Valencia, and the Community of Madrid) are, in turn, the ones that generate the most employees in the sector, together accounting for 75.9% of the total number of employees in the sector in the fourth quarter.
