Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recently claimed that his country is responsible for the creation of half of all new jobs in the eurozone.
While giving a speech at the Federal Committee of his centre-left PSOE party, Sánchez praised the improving state of Spain’s employment figures.
“Despite all the difficulties we have encountered both internally and externally, Spain is moving forward,” Sánchez said on 5 July. “We contribute 40% of the growth and half of the new jobs in the eurozone.”
However, the official figures from Eurostat paint a different picture. They show that some 157,125,000 people were employed in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 155,330,000 in the same period the year before. This constitutes an increase of about 1.8 million jobs.
Spain’s figures stand at roughly 21,599,000 at the beginning of 2025 and 21,145,000 in 2024.
That means an increase of about 454,000 jobs, representing just over 25% of the extra jobs in the eurozone — not 50%, as Sánchez claimed.
Euroverify reached out to Sánchez’s party, PSOE, to clarify what the prime minister meant, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
However, it is worth noting that Spain has still contributed the most new jobs to the eurozone of any country in the same period, even if this amount does not account for half of them.
Using the same calculations for each of the eurozone countries, Spain ends up top of the list with its 25.3%, followed by France with 24.5% and then Italy with 20.5%.
Germany (11%) and Portugal (7%) round out the Top Five eurozone countries creating new jobs.
But what about overall employment rates?
Nonetheless, despite being a leading job creator in the eurozone, Spain still ranks as having one of the lowest employment rates compared to its total population in the European Union as a whole, according to the same Eurostat dataset.
It stands at 66.6% employment, followed by Greece at 63.9%, Italy at 63% and Romania at 62.9%.
However, these figures do not paint the full picture as employment rates usually compare the number of people in employment compared to the total population of working age, rather than the population as a whole.
The most recent EU data, calculated using this method, states that the EU’s employment rate as a whole was 75.8% in 2024.
Spain still ranks among the lowest EU countries under this calculation, with 71.4%, again ahead of Romania (69.5%), Greece (69.3%) and Italy (67.1%).
The EU countries with the highest employment rates are the Netherlands (83.5%), Malta (83%), the Czech Republic (82.3%), Sweden (81.95%), and Estonia (81.8%).
Despite its employment rate being on the lower end, reports state that Spain’s GDP is thriving and outperforming France, Germany, and Italy: the eurozone’s biggest economies.
It has recently been boosted by increasing domestic demand and tourism, among other factors, such as an improving service sector, which provides more than two-thirds of Spain’s economic output.
Euronews Business reported that Spain’s GDP, a metric often associated with living standards, has also now surpassed that of G7 member Japan.
In 2025, Japan’s GDP per capita was $33,960 (€29,000), according to data from the International Monetary Fund, whereas in Spain it came to $36,190 (around €30,870,00).
