The average annual salary in the Lleida demarcation reached 25,855 euros gross in 2023 after an increase of 12.2% since 2019.
The gross payroll of employees grew by 27.1% in the same period, reaching 5.5 billion euros. This increase is due to the combination of more employees and increases in the Interprofessional Minimum Wage along with collective bargaining.
Employment depends on foreign labor
The number of taxpayers with salary income went from 187,868 to 212,763 people. Salaried employment added 13,326 positions between the end of 2019 and the end of 2023. Almost 60% of these new positions were filled by foreign citizens.
Social Security records do not include approximately 7,500 irregular foreign workers who labor in the underground economy. There is a difference of 10,000 people between the data from the Tax Agency and that of Social Security due to their different accounting methods.
Annual employment growth ranges between 3,800 and 5,500 workers in recent years. More than 3,000 of these new contracts correspond to people born abroad.
Demographic decline demands labor regularization
The demarcation faces a structural demographic decline with a negative natural balance since 2014. The cohorts of 16-year-old young people will fall below 5,000 in two years and below 4,000 in a decade. This reality makes migrant labor necessary to cover labor demand, especially in the seasonal agricultural sector.
The Reintegra association has joined as a collaborating entity in the migrant regularization process. It joins Pagesos Solidaris, Fruita amb Justícia Social, Arrels de Sant Ignasi, Ndiatiguia, and Grup Cultural Garrigues in this task.
"Some 200,000 immigrants have requested documentation to reside and work in Spanish territory since April 16" - Pilar Cancela, Secretary of State for Migration
This statement places around 2,000 applications submitted from the Lleida demarcation during the period enabled for regularization.