One in four self-employed workers in Malaga province is from abroad

Malaga is the fifth province in Spain for its total number of self-employed workers (autónomos), currently 141,600, behind Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Alicante, and just ahead of Seville, where RETA affiliates (Social Security's special scheme for the self-employed) barely exceed 120,000. However, in terms of the number of self-employed workers from abroad, Malaga comes fourth in the ranking with 35,520, behind Barcelona, Madrid and Alicante and ahead of Valencia. In Andalucía, Malaga is not followed by Seville, but actually by Almeria, albeit a long way behind, with 7,629 self-employed workers of foreign origin.

These are absolute figures published by Spain's Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration for the month of July. In relative terms, Malaga rises even further when analysing the percentage of self-employment of foreign origin. Therefore, the Costa del Sol province comes second for the highest proportion of foreigners among the total number of self-employed workers: 25%, one in four, of those affiliated to RETA. This figure is only surpassed by the Balearic Islands, with 27%, or nearly 29,150 of the total of 107,374.

Other provinces where the proportion of foreigners among self-employed workers exceeds 20% are Alicante, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas. In Andalucía, the province following Malaga is Almeria, where foreign self-employed workers account for 12% of the total.

Malaga, with this 25% of the self-employed being foreign workers, far exceeds the Spanish average. In the country as a whole, of the total of 3.4 million RETA affiliates, 484,014 were born in other countries, representing 14%.

Coincidentally, two other Andalusian provinces, Cordoba and Jaen, are the two in which foreigners account for the lowest proportion of the total number of self-employed affiliates in Spain: barely 3%, as is the case in Zamora and Badajoz.

Malaga also tops another ranking: that of the percentage of foreigners affiliated to Social Security who are not employed as self-employed, but who have started their own business. There are nearly 124,000 foreign contributors in the province, of which 35,520 are self-employed, almost 30%. No other Spanish province exceeds this figure. Cadiz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Alicante come close, all three with just over 25% of their foreign workers registered with RETA. The Spanish average is 15.7% because, of the more than three million contributors from other countries, just over 484,000 are self-employed.

Among the provinces where the lowest proportion of foreigners are self-employed is one Andalusian province, Huelva, with only 6.6% of its foreign contributors affiliated with RETA.

There is a lot of self-employment in Malaga, with many foreigners working for themselves, but in which sectors? Two sectors stand out in particular: information and communications, for one, and real estate activities make up the other. In the former, there are a total of 4,415 self-employed workers, of whom 2,137, almost half, are of foreign origin. In the second, there are 6,037 self-employed workers, of whom 2,778 are foreign, representing 46%.

Next up are two other sectors in which foreigners account for more than 30% of self-employment: the hospitality industry (4,885 of the more than 15,000 total) and auxiliary services, where there are 2,700 foreign entrepreneurs out of a total of 8,366.

In which activities do immigrants have the least influence? For example, in agriculture, where they barely represent 2.5% with 109 of the total of 4,235 self-employed workers.

Malaga is the Spanish province where self-employment has grown the most overall in the last decade. Specifically, the increase has been 33%. Malaga is followed by Santa Cruz de Tenerife (30%), Las Palmas (26%), Alicante (21%) and the Balearic Islands (18%). Another Andalusian province, Cadiz, comes next at 17%.

That said, Malaga is not leading the increase in the number of self-employed foreigners over the last decade. That position goes to Valencia, where it has risen by 151%. In Malaga, too, the number of self-employed has more than doubled since July 2015, now up by 106%. Their growth has also been higher in other provinces such as A Coruña, Vizcaya, Lugo, Ávila, Albacete and Asturias. In Andalucía, the province with the second-highest increase after Malaga is Almeria (96%).

Lastly, here is one more calculation made by employment specialist Carlos Castedo: the 3.4 million self-employed workers in Spain mean that there are 108 of them for every 1,000 inhabitants aged between 16 and 64 years. According to Castedo's figures, they range from 162.8 in Zamora to 54.9 in Ceuta. In Malaga, the figure is 120.9. This is the second highest figure for an Andalusian province, behind only Almeria (124.5).