Tourism is now Spain’s biggest industry

Spain's enduring appeal to holidaymakers means its tourism industry is the country's most important industry sector

Despite its inherent seasonality, the tourism industry in Spain now generates more jobs than any other employment sector, reports Spanish business daily Cinco Días.

And for the first time ever, Spain’s tourism industry has overtaken manufacturing as the prime driver of the economy, despite the country’s export sector enjoying an unprecedented boom so far in 2013…

The last time Cinco Días conducted such a study was in August 2007 when they discovered that 18.2 per cent of all jobs in Spain were in the industrial/manufacturing sector – the equivalent of approximately 2.7 million jobs. At the time, tourism accounted for just two million jobs.

In the six years since, however, jobs in Spain’s tourism sector have increased by 88,000: a modest rise, but in a time when every other sector was shedding jobs, it has been enough to see the sector take top spot.

During the same period, jobs in Spain’s industrial sector now number just 710,000, which means that tourism now accounts for 15.7 per cent of all employment in Spain – the largest share of the market.

The collapse of vast swathes of Spain’s construction industry over the past six years is primarily to blame for the massive job losses in the industrial sector, while average salaries have also fallen. Today, an average annual salary in the tourism industry of Spain pays just €14.2k, which is some way below the national average of €22.9k.