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Registered foreign workers affiliated to Social Security. By sex and type of scheme. Provinces

Registered foreign workers affiliated to Social Security. By sex and type of scheme. Annual averages. Provinces 2024
Barcelona Girona Lleida Tarragona Catalonia Spain % Cat./Spa.
By sex
Men 271,907 45,576 30,856 34,155 382,494 1,581,983 24.2
Women 216,036 29,546 16,347 23,002 284,931 1,244,328 22.9
By type of scheme
General and coal mining 386,990 59,418 34,343 42,346 523,096 1,972,455 26.5
Special agriculture 2,576 2,599 8,222 3,925 17,321 233,114 7.4
Special sea 315 185 0 263 763 5,378 14.2
Special domestic 22,256 2,285 918 1,684 27,144 162,515 16.7
Special self-employed 75,810 10,637 3,720 8,938 99,105 452,877 21.9
Total 487,946 75,123 47,203 57,157 667,428 2,826,340 23.6
Source: Ministry of Labour and Social Economy.
Notes:
Must consider that one single person can be accounted for as many times as social security payments require, either due to working in different labour activities as part of to single scheme or different ones.
Employees of the Agricultural Special System and the Domestic Special System are not included.
Totals include those not classified by sex.

Last update: April 17, 2026.

Methodological note

Definition of concepts

Worker affiliated to the Social Security system
Person that exercises a labour activity in exchange for payment that is affiliated to the general Social Security scheme and the special scheme for mining and coal workers that are working or in similar situations to being working such as temporary incapacity, suspended by reasons of redundancy, partially unemployed, etc. Not included are workers that are fully unemployed, workers with special agreements, workers for companies covered by restructuring plans and workers receiving aid in the form of early retirement payments or in other situations that do not have an effect on contributions. The same person is accounted for as many times as they have situations in which they contribute, whether they have several labour activities in a single regime or in various.
Foreign worker affiliated to Social Security
Foreign citizen that resides in or is legally located in Spain and has obtained administrative authorisation to work, in the cases where this is a legal or regulatory requirement. This situation equates them to a Spanish worker affiliated to Social Security.

Methodological aspects

Applications and registrations of foreign workers, both self-employed or as employees, must be accompanied by documentation accrediting nationality, and other than the case of workers to whom EU regulations are applicable, the corresponding work permit or a document accrediting that they are exempted from the obligation to have one, as well as the details and documents required of Spanish workers.

Foreigners that require administrative authorisation prior to any activity in Spain and that do not possess this authorisation are not included in the Social Security System, notwithstanding that they may be considered included for the purposes of obtaining certain benefits in accordance with the stipulations of the law.

The number of affiliates does not necessarily correspond to that of workers: the same person is accounted for as many times as they have obligations to make contributions.

When the value is lower than that of the minimum unit to be able to estimate the statistical operation or if it effects statistical confidentiality, the symbol used is "..".