Are there really only 7,916 jobs open in the Canaries?

It is the number of posts establishments were actively recruiting for in the second quarter of 2026. Agriculture, domestic staff, the self-employed and informal hiring are not covered.

So do 18 people compete for every post?

No. It is our division of two statistics with different reference dates and different populations: an order of magnitude, not competition for a specific job.

Is hospitality behind the low figure?

There is no sector breakdown for the Canaries. Across Spain the largest block is public administration with 51,835 posts, while hospitality accounts for 10,620.

Does the survey prove that nobody wants to work?

No. The questionnaire includes an answer on a shortage of applicants, but the INE does not report it separately. Whatever would go there sits inside "other": 3.7 per cent, down from 6.3 a year earlier.

Why are vacancies falling while the economy grows?

The survey does not explain that. It shows only what establishments state: 89.6 per cent need nobody, 6.7 per cent cite the cost of hiring.

CANARY ISLANDS · ECONOMY

7,916 unfilled posts, 144,459 unemployed: why the Canaries are not hiring

Canary industry, construction and services had exactly 7,916 posts open and actively being recruited for in the second quarter of 2026 — 2.6 per cent fewer than a year earlier, while the Spanish figure rose 1.3 per cent to 151,736. That comes from the INE labour cost survey published on 17 September 2026. Registered unemployment on the islands stood at 144,459 in August: around 18 people per advertised post — and employers themselves give a reason that is not the expected one.

25 September 2026 · By Martin Kosinski · 5 min. · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

Calle del Castillo in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (illustrative)

Photo: Gerardo nuñez, CC BY 3.0 (illustrative image).

The figures and where they come from

7,916 unfilled posts, Canaries, second quarter 2026, down 2.6 per cent from 8,127 a year earlier. INE, Encuesta Trimestral de Coste Laboral, table 6064, 17 September 2026.
Spain: 151,736, up 1.3 per cent. The Canaries rank seventh of 17 autonomous communities; ahead of them Catalonia (31,211) and Madrid (27,404).
144,459 registered unemployed at the end of August 2026, of whom 114,926 in services. Ministerio de Trabajo y Economía Social, 2 September 2026.
18.25 unemployed per unfilled post: our own calculation, 144,459 divided by 7,916.
Reasons given by establishments with no vacancy: 89.6 per cent "no further worker needed", 6.7 per cent "high cost of hiring" (5.3 a year earlier), 3.7 per cent "other"; Spain 90.6 / 5.8 / 3.6. On the cost reason the Canaries rank fifth of 17. INE, table 6066.

What 7,916 counts — and what it does not

The INE questionnaire defines a vacancy as a post recently created, unoccupied or about to fall vacant, and for which the employer is "taking active measures to find a suitable candidate from outside the company": advertising it, notifying the public employment service, using a placement agency, interviewing or selecting applicants. A staffing need without such steps does not count. Some 28,099 contribution accounts are surveyed each quarter. Excluded are agriculture and fishing (CNAE section A), private households as employers of domestic staff (T) and extraterritorial organisations (U), plus the self-employed and informal hiring. Public administration, by contrast, is included.

18 to 1: our calculation and its limits

The ratio is our own division, not an INE figure. The vacancies cover April to June 2026 and were published on 17 September; the unemployment figure is a stock at the end of August, published on 2 September. Above all the two do not measure matching populations: the unemployment count includes everyone registered with the employment offices, whatever their sector — many are looking in fields the survey does not cover. As a matching rate the number is useless; as an order of magnitude it holds: the official job market is roughly ten times smaller than the number of people looking for work.

Employers answer the question themselves

The rarely quoted part of the survey is a question put to establishments with no vacancy: why not? In the Canaries 89.6 per cent replied that they needed no further worker. 6.7 per cent cited the high cost of hiring, up from 5.3 per cent a year earlier and above the Spanish figure of 5.8 — fifth of 17, with Murcia leading on 10.4 and the Balearics last on 2.5. Across Spain "no further worker needed" has fallen from 92.6 to 90.6 per cent since the second quarter of 2024, while the cost reason rose from 4.1 to 5.8.

The tourism explanation does not hold

Hospitality would be the obvious culprit. It cannot be tested directly: vacancies by autonomous community are published only as a single total, with no sector breakdown. The Spanish breakdown contradicts the expectation. The largest single block of the 151,736 Spanish vacancies is not hotels but public administration and defence including social security, with 51,835 posts — 34 per cent. Hospitality accounts for 10,620, or 7 per cent, and there too the commonest reason for having no vacancy is "no further worker needed" (87.6 per cent); the cost reason stands at 7.6 after 7.5 per cent, so it has not moved. The counter-test: the Balearics report 3,125 vacancies, 14.4 per cent fewer than a year earlier, and the lowest cost share of all 17 regions.

"Nobody wants to work" against "nobody is hiring"

Anyone claiming that nobody wants to work will find no data point here to cite — and there is a technical reason for that. The questionnaire offers four answers: no further worker needed, high cost of hiring, "lack of applicants with suitable qualifications and training", and other. Only three categories are published; the shortage-of-applicants answer does not appear separately and can only sit inside "other" — 3.7 per cent in the Canaries, down from 6.3. A second question, on why vacancies were still unfilled three months later, explicitly offers a shortage of applicants and "the candidates did not consider the financial conditions adequate" — it is not published at all. The other side's case turns out differently than expected: Jorge Marichal, president of Ashotel and of the Confederación Española de Hoteles y Alojamientos Turísticos, warned of a staff shortage on Radio Televisión Canaria on 21 January 2026, saying labour was hard to find, "pero no porque no sea atractivo el sector, sino porque la gente no tiene capacidad para desplazarse a los núcleos turísticos importantes" — the reason being infrastructure and housing, not unwillingness to work. The Asofuer and Asolan associations spoke in similar terms to Atlántico Hoy in April 2026.

Where the official job listings actually are: the Servicio Canario de Empleo runs a "Buscador de Ofertas de Empleo" on its portal (gobiernodecanarias.org/empleo/sce), where companies also post their own offers online. Spain-wide, the Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal collects them at sepe.es/HomeSepe/encontrar-trabajo/ofertas-empleo, and for the rest of the EU the portal is EURES (eures.europa.eu). All three were reachable on 25 September 2026. None of them is the source of the 7,916: that figure comes from a survey of establishments, not from counting advertisements.

What the two numbers do and do not measure: the 7,916 is a sample estimate by the INE for establishments in CNAE-09 sections B to S and covers only posts being actively recruited for. The 144,459 is an administrative stock of everyone registered with the employment offices at the end of August 2026, not the unemployment rate from the EPA labour force survey. The ratio of roughly 18 to 1 is our calculation: an order of magnitude, not a matching rate. The INE publishes no sampling error for it; the series has moved between 5,033 and 8,951 over twelve quarters.

FAQ

Are there really only 7,916 jobs open in the Canaries?: It is the number of posts establishments were actively recruiting for in the second quarter of 2026. Agriculture, domestic staff, the self-employed and informal hiring are not covered.
So do 18 people compete for every post?: No. It is our division of two statistics with different reference dates and different populations: an order of magnitude, not competition for a specific job.
Is hospitality behind the low figure?: There is no sector breakdown for the Canaries. Across Spain the largest block is public administration with 51,835 posts, while hospitality accounts for 10,620.
Does the survey prove that nobody wants to work?: No. The questionnaire includes an answer on a shortage of applicants, but the INE does not report it separately. Whatever would go there sits inside "other": 3.7 per cent, down from 6.3 a year earlier.
Why are vacancies falling while the economy grows?: The survey does not explain that. It shows only what establishments state: 89.6 per cent need nobody, 6.7 per cent cite the cost of hiring.

Read on

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