The Barcelona Tourism Observatory: city and region has published a new edition of the report on the Job market and salaries of tourism activity in Destination Barcelona, which contains 2023 data1.
The report consists of a first section of context of job market and salaries, which highlights the weight of tourism activity in the whole of Destination Barcelona, shows data on new hiring and registered unemployment during 2023 and the evolution of wages since 2019. In a second section, the report includes an analysis of the characteristics of salaried employees in tourism and their salaries, while they are compared with those of other economic activities. In the last section, although the entire report includes data from the three geographical areas where OTB usually covers (Barcelona city, Barcelona region and Destination Barcelona), disaggregated data can be consulted for the districts of the city of Barcelona.
This report has been compiled thanks to the specific exploitation of the Continuous Sample of Working Life (MCVL) carried out by the Municipal Data Office of the Barcelona City Council, to the Observatory of Labour and Productive Model, and to Idescat based on the INSS data. To correctly interpret the data, especially evolutionary data, it is important to remember that the Continuous Sample of Working Life is based on data on individuals affiliated with Social Security in effective terms, meaning those remunerated with salaries, without taking into account income from temporary lay-off plans (ERTE), which particularly impacted the tourism activity during 2020-2021, nor unemployment benefits or subsidies.
The following is a summary of the most relevant results of this new edition of the report:
- In 2023, the number of salaried employees in the tourism activity in Destination Barcelona stood at 317,174 (+6.3% year-on-year). Thus, in 2023, the share of employment in the tourism activity increased again, accounting for 6% of total employment in Destination Barcelona (+0.3 pp Var. 23/22).
- However, new hiring decreased compared to the previous year (-17.6% Var. 23/22), most likely due to the increase in the share of permanent hiring recorded since the previous year, driven by the 2022 Spanish labour reform. In the tourism activity of Destination Barcelona, this type of contract rose from 17.3% in 2021 to 48.0% in 2022 and 55% in 2023. In this regard, it is worth noting that the reduction in the number of new contracts did not lead to an increase in registered unemployment. On the contrary, it resulted in an average monthly decrease of 1% in Destination Barcelona as a whole.
- Regarding salaries, the average gross salary per capita in the tourism activity in Destination Barcelona was €25,156, representing a year-on-year increase of +5.0%. In contrast, during 2021 and 2022, more significant increases were recorded (+18.8% and +9.6%, respectively), due to the effects of Covid-19 on the labour market and wages in the tourism sector. Moreover, it is important to note that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the province grew by +3.4% year-on-year, meaning that the real growth in tourism wages was more limited, at +1.6%.
- By type of activity, the restaurant industry, which continued to employ more than half of the salaried employees in tourism, remained as the sub-activity with the lowest average salary (€18,082 gross per year), while tourism transport once again had the highest salaries (€37,196). Virtually all tourism sub-activities experienced salary increases compared to the previous year, especially travel agencies, tour operators, and others, with a +13.0% year-on-year increase.
- 4 out of 10 salaried employees in the tourism activity were women, who continued to receive lower wages than men (€20,948 vs. €26,615). Thus, although the gender pay gap slightly narrowed compared to the previous year (-3.7 pp Var. 23/22), women still earned 21.3% less than men.
- By age group, the proportion of workers under 30 in the tourism activity remained significantly higher than in other activities (24.0% vs. 16.5%). Moreover, wages continued to have a directly proportional relationship with age: in the tourism activity, workers under 30 received annual gross salaries that were €10,000 lower than those of workers aged 45 and over.
- The proportion of foreign workers in the tourism activity (28.0%) was, once again, significantly higher than in other activities (13.7%). As in other sectors, foreign workers received lower wages than Spanish workers, with an origin-based wage gap of nearly €6,700 (34.6% difference).
- The proportion of administrative assistants in the tourism activity was significantly higher than in other activities (70.2% vs. 48.1%). However, the category with the highest wage gap between sectors was administrative managers, who earned 16.2% less in the tourism activity than in other activities. In any case, wages increased proportionally to job category and it is worth highlighting that, in the tourism activities, the salaries of top-level positions were +12.3% higher than those in the same category across other economic sectors.
- The tourism activity was characterized by a lower proportion of workers with higher education degrees compared to other activities (48.5% vs. 62.6%). Moreover, in the tourism activity, even those with higher education qualifications earned less than €30,000, which could be due to an overqualification for the positions they held. On the other hand, in the rest of the activities, this was the only group that exceeded €30,000 in salary
- Almost 95% of salaried employees in the tourism activity had a permanent contract, a higher proportion than in other sectors (83%). However, this improvement in job stability did not translate into greater pay equality. On the contrary, workers with permanent contracts earned less in the tourism activity than in other industries.
- One-quarter of tourism activity salaried workers were employed part-time, compared to 14.4% in other sectors. The percentage of women with part-time contracts was significantly higher than that of men, and part-time wages were slightly more than half of full-time wages.
- Tourism companies with more than 200 employees, which were proportionally much fewer than in other activities, offered better salaries to their employees.
- In the city of Barcelona, residents of Ciutat Vella had the highest proportion of workers in the tourism activity, with 1 in 4 people employed in this field. They were followed by residents of Sants-Montjuïc (15.3%) and Nou Barris (13.8%). These three districts also recorded the lowest gross per capita salaries in the tourism activity within the city. In contrast, districts with a lower proportion of tourism salaried workers, such as Sarrià-Sant Gervasi (7.6%) and Les Corts (8.7%), had the highest average tourism salaries in the city, both exceeding €40,000 per person.
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1 Although the latest available annual job market data are for 2024, the latest available wage data are for 2023. For this reason, this document only includes 2023 data. However, it should be remembered that the job market data for 2024 can be consulted in chapter 9 of the 2024 Barcelona Tourism Activity report.
More information: Job market and salaries of tourism activity in Destination Barcelona 2023 report
