The numbers
Together with Murcia and Extremadura, the Canary Islands rank among Spain's least productive regions. According to the Consejo General de Economistas, only these three communities and Melilla fall below the national average — and the Canaries have been stuck there for decades.
The 2024 annual report by the Confederación Canaria de Empresarios (CCE) puts the monthly loss at 27 million hours not worked. That represents a 3.9 per cent drop from the previous year, but it is still 18.5 per cent above the pre-pandemic figure of 2019. The increase in the Canaries exceeds the national average by five percentage points.
Meanwhile, the average annual salary stands at €22,532 — the second-lowest in all of Spain, just ahead of Extremadura. The national average is €27,559. Canarian workers earn roughly €5,000 less per year than the average.
Why the Canaries perform so poorly
The causes are structural and have little to do with laziness. There are five central factors:
A service economy without industry. The Canaries depend almost entirely on the service sector, above all on tourism. CCE vice-president José Cristóbal García put it plainly: if an economy has more waiters than engineers, the average productivity drops by definition. It is not a moral failure — it is the structure.
Record-level absenteeism. According to Randstad reports, the Canaries consistently have one of Spain's highest absenteeism rates. In the third quarter of 2025, the islands led alongside Murcia and Cantabria. Through sick leave alone (incapacidad temporal), Canarian businesses lose a disproportionate share of working hours. Between 2021 and 2024 there were 188,558 additional IT proceedings.
Skills mismatch. Despite an unemployment rate above the national average, thousands of positions remain unfilled because qualifications do not match. Between 2019 and 2025, unfilled vacancies grew by 67.2 per cent — above the Spanish average. The CCE calls for expanding dual vocational training with greater business involvement.
Rising labour costs without productivity gains. Labour costs climbed 18.8 per cent between 2019 and 2025. But productivity has not kept pace. The result: lower competitiveness and more caution in hiring.
Infrastructure deficits. The CCE report identifies ageing energy infrastructure with blackout risks, congested roads, insufficient school places and a social care coverage rate that sits at the bottom of the national table.
What this means for the islands
Low productivity has a direct consequence: low wages. Those who produce little distribute little. The Canaries are growing above the national average — in 2024, GDP rose 4.4 per cent, more than almost any other region. But that growth is based on volume, not efficiency: more tourists, more jobs, but not more value per hour worked.
This means that if tourism weakens — through geopolitical crises, rising flight costs or a European recession — the Canaries lack the productive backbone to cushion the blow. The islands earn well when the season runs. But they earn poorly per hour worked.
The regional government set up a productivity commission in early 2026 that is also tasked with addressing absenteeism. Whether it will be enough remains to be seen. The employers' federation is calling for more: shorter processing times for sick leave, better coordination between the public health system and the mutual insurance companies, and a serious debate about why an archipelago with nearly a million workers loses 27 million working hours every month.