Did Spanish manufacturing grow in 2025?

Yes on both counts, but unevenly. Gross value added rose 3.4% to EUR 178.8bn and employment rose 3.5% to 2,279,200 persons (Eurostat nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e). Because employment grew slightly faster than output, value added per person employed did not improve, and the whole-economy productivity index fell from 96.1 to 95.6 against EU-27 = 100 (tesem160).

How does Spanish manufacturing productivity compare with the EU?

Below it. Value added per person employed was EUR 78.4k in 2025 against EUR 89.3k for the EU-27, about 12% lower (calculated from nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e). On the purchasing-power-adjusted whole-economy measure Spain was 95.6 with the EU-27 at 100 (tesem160, 2025).

What does Spanish industrial electricity cost?

EUR 0.1431 per kWh in 2025-S2 for band ID, 2,000 to 19,999 MWh a year, excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes (nrg_pc_205, siec E7000, tax I_TAX). That is 25% below the EU-27 average of EUR 0.1920 and the third cheapest of the ten Western countries covered, after Finland and Sweden.

Is there a labour shortage in Spanish manufacturing?

Not on the Eurostat measures. The manufacturing job vacancy rate was 0.6% in 2025, the lowest of the ten countries here and below the EU-27 average of 1.5% (jvs_a_rate_r2). The share of manufacturers naming labour as a factor limiting production was 11.1% in 2026-Q3 against 18.0% for the EU-27, and it fell rather than rose (ei_bsin_q_r2).

How many Spanish manufacturers use AI?

17.1% of those with 10 or more employees in 2025, fractionally below the EU-27 manufacturing average of 17.3% (isoc_eb_ain2, E_AI_TANY). The 2024 figure was 9.8%, but Eurostat widened the question set for the 2025 wave, so the two years are not a clean time series.

Home / Western European manufacturing in 2026: the data

Manufacturing data · Spain · Eurostat, extracted 22 September 2026

Spain: the manufacturing data behind a 2026 plant decision

The only country in this set where manufacturing employment clearly grew, and one where value added per worker is still below the EU-27. Cheap power, a large automotive supplier base, and the Eurostat figures with their dataset codes.

In shortSpanish manufacturing produced EUR 178.8bn of value added in 2025, 11.7% of the whole economy, with 2,279,200 people, 3.5% more than in 2024 (Eurostat nama_10_a10, nama_10_a10_e). Value added per person employed was EUR 78.4k against EUR 89.3k for the EU-27. An hour cost EUR 28.2 and a kilowatt-hour EUR 0.1431, one of the cheapest industrial electricity prices in Western Europe.

Value added and employment

Spain manufacturing: output, employment and productivity
Indicator	2024	2025	EU-27 2025
Manufacturing gross value added (EUR bn)	172.9	178.8	2,668.8
Change on previous year	—	+3.4%	+2.0%
Manufacturing share of total gross value added	—	11.7%	15.8%
Employment, NACE C (thousand persons)	2,201.5	2,279.2	29,901.6
Value added per person employed (EUR k)	—	78.4	89.3
Productivity per hour, whole economy (PPS, EU-27=100)	96.1	95.6	100.0

Eurostat nama_10_a10 (B1G, CP_MEUR, NACE C and TOTAL) and nama_10_a10_e (EMP_DC, THS_PER, NACE C), 2024–2025; productivity index from tesem160 (NLPR_HW, PC_EU27_2020_MPPS_CP), whole economy, 2024–2025. Value added per person employed = mfg GVA ÷ mfg employment, nominal current prices, not adjusted for price levels. Extracted 22 September 2026.

Spain is the exception in this group: manufacturing employment grew 3.5% in 2025 while every other Western country except Denmark and Portugal shed people. Value added grew slightly less than employment, +3.4%, so output per head did not improve, and the whole-economy productivity index slipped from 96.1 to 95.6 against EU-27 = 100. Value added per person employed, EUR 78.4k, is 12% below the EU-27 figure. There were 167,401 registered manufacturing enterprises in 2023 (sbs_ovw_act), a count that includes many micro-firms and is not a factory count.

Where the value added sits

Three largest manufacturing sub-sectors in Spain by gross value added, 2023
Rank	Sub-sector (NACE Rev.2)	GVA 2023 (EUR m)	% of manufacturing GVA
1	Food, beverages and tobacco (C10–C12)	34,193	20.8%
2	Fabricated metal products (C25)	15,417	9.4%
3	Motor vehicles and trailers (C29)	14,993	9.1%

Eurostat nama_10_a64 (B1G, CP_MEUR), 2023, extracted 22 September 2026. Shares are calculated against nama_10_a64's own NACE C total for Spain in 2023, EUR 164,020m, which differs marginally from the nama_10_a10 vintage used above.

Food and drink is more than a fifth of Spanish manufacturing value added, twice the next sub-sector. Chemicals (EUR 10,825m), wood, paper and printing (EUR 10,228m) and textiles (EUR 9,584m) follow. The combination that matters commercially is the second and third places: fabricated metal plus motor vehicles is 18.5% of value added, and much of it is tier-1 and tier-2 supply to assembly plants whose customers ask for recorded capacity evidence rather than for averages.

What an hour and a kilowatt-hour cost

What an hour and a kilowatt-hour cost in Spain
Measure	Period	Spain	EU-27
Labour cost per hour, NACE C	2023	EUR 25.9	EUR 32.1
Labour cost per hour, NACE C	2024	EUR 27.2	EUR 33.8
Labour cost per hour, NACE C	2025	EUR 28.2	EUR 35.0
Change since 2023	2023→25	+8.9%	+9.0%
Electricity, band ID, excl. recoverable taxes	2025-S1	EUR 0.1500/kWh	EUR 0.1969/kWh
Electricity, band ID, excl. recoverable taxes	2025-S2	EUR 0.1431/kWh	EUR 0.1920/kWh

Labour cost: Eurostat lc_lci_lev (unit EUR, lcstruct D1_D4_MD5, NACE C), 2023–2025. Electricity: nrg_pc_205 (siec E7000, nrg_cons MWH2000-19999 = band ID, 2,000–19,999 MWh/year, tax I_TAX, EUR/kWh), 2025-S1 and 2025-S2. Extracted 22 September 2026.

Spanish labour costs EUR 6.8 an hour less than the EU-27 average and rose at almost exactly the EU rate (+8.9% against +9.0%). Power is the real difference: EUR 0.1431/kWh in 2025-S2 is 25% below the EU-27 average and 48% below Denmark, and it fell 4.6% between the two semesters. Both the cheapest input and the largest constraint in Spain are the same thing — an hour of work that produces less value added than the European average.

Hiring and labour shortage

Vacancies and reported labour shortage in Spain manufacturing
Measure	Spain	EU-27
Job vacancy rate, NACE C, 2025 (2024)	0.6% (0.4%)	1.5% (1.8%)
Quarterly vacancy rate, 2025-Q3 / 2025-Q4	0.5 / 0.6	1.5 / 1.5
Labour limiting production, 2026-Q2 / 2026-Q3	11.4% / 11.1%	15.8% / 18.0%

Job vacancy rate: Eurostat jvs_a_rate_r2 (NACE C, sizeclas TOTAL, unit AVG_A), 2024–2025, and jvs_q_nace2 (indicator JVR, NACE C, NSA), 2025-Q3 and 2025-Q4. Labour as a factor limiting production: ei_bsin_q_r2 (indic BS-FLP3-PC, s_adj NSA), 2026-Q2 and 2026-Q3 — 2026 quarters, not on the same time base as the annual rate. Extracted 22 September 2026.

Spain has the lowest manufacturing job vacancy rate of the ten Western countries, 0.6% in 2025 against an EU-27 1.5%, and it is one of only two countries in the group where the annual rate rose rather than fell. It is also one of only two where the share of manufacturers naming labour as a limit fell between the two 2026 quarters, from 11.4% to 11.1%, while the EU-27 rose from 15.8% to 18.0%. Labour availability is not the Spanish constraint.

AI and ICT adoption

17.1% of Spanish manufacturers with 10 or more employees used at least one AI technology in 2025, against 9.8% in 2024 and 17.3% for EU-27 manufacturing (isoc_eb_ain2, E_AI_TANY, PC_ENT, GE10, NACE C) — in other words, level with the European average and below it by a fraction of a point. Across all sectors Spain was 20.3% against an EU-27 20.0% (isoc_eb_ai). Eurostat broadened the AI question battery for the 2025 wave, so the gap between the two years is partly methodological. The Digital Intensity Index was not retrieved for Spain in this extraction and nothing is substituted for it.

What this means for a plant here

The gap to close is output per staffed hour. EUR 78.4k of value added per person employed against EUR 89.3k for the EU-27, and the gap widened in 2025 because employment grew faster than output. In a Spanish plant the question is not how to cut the cost of an hour — at EUR 28.2 it is already EUR 6.8 below the EU average — but how many saleable units come out of it.
Do not lead with energy. At EUR 0.1431/kWh Spain pays a quarter less than the EU-27 average. An energy-per-part business case that works in Germany or Italy will not carry a Spanish board.
The automotive supply base is the lever. Motor vehicles are the third-largest sub-sector and fabricated metal the second. Customer capacity and capability audits, not wage inflation, are what push Spanish suppliers towards recorded, time-stamped production data.
Headcount growth is not a plan. Spain added 77,700 manufacturing jobs in 2025 and lost ground on productivity in the same year. A plant that answers a demand increase with people rather than with recovered hours repeats that pattern at site level.
Where the next question is how to fund the equipment, Spanish deduction and efficiency routes are covered separately at factoryoptimizationai.com/we/.

DisclosureThis site is published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which sells production-monitoring and OEE software (450+ factories equipped in 30+ countries; offices in Paris, Chicago, Shenzhen and Bucharest). Read the Eurostat sections above as data and this line as the interest behind them. For a Spanish supplier the fair comparison set is wider than software: a customer-driven capacity study, an MES module already in the ERP contract, a local integrator, or a disciplined month of manual stop-cause logging will each answer part of the question.

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Questions

Did Spanish manufacturing grow in 2025?: Yes on both counts, but unevenly. Gross value added rose 3.4% to EUR 178.8bn and employment rose 3.5% to 2,279,200 persons (Eurostat nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e). Because employment grew slightly faster than output, value added per person employed did not improve, and the whole-economy productivity index fell from 96.1 to 95.6 against EU-27 = 100 (tesem160).
How does Spanish manufacturing productivity compare with the EU?: Below it. Value added per person employed was EUR 78.4k in 2025 against EUR 89.3k for the EU-27, about 12% lower (calculated from nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e). On the purchasing-power-adjusted whole-economy measure Spain was 95.6 with the EU-27 at 100 (tesem160, 2025).
What does Spanish industrial electricity cost?: EUR 0.1431 per kWh in 2025-S2 for band ID, 2,000 to 19,999 MWh a year, excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes (nrg_pc_205, siec E7000, tax I_TAX). That is 25% below the EU-27 average of EUR 0.1920 and the third cheapest of the ten Western countries covered, after Finland and Sweden.
Is there a labour shortage in Spanish manufacturing?: Not on the Eurostat measures. The manufacturing job vacancy rate was 0.6% in 2025, the lowest of the ten countries here and below the EU-27 average of 1.5% (jvs_a_rate_r2). The share of manufacturers naming labour as a factor limiting production was 11.1% in 2026-Q3 against 18.0% for the EU-27, and it fell rather than rose (ei_bsin_q_r2).
How many Spanish manufacturers use AI?: 17.1% of those with 10 or more employees in 2025, fractionally below the EU-27 manufacturing average of 17.3% (isoc_eb_ain2, E_AI_TANY). The 2024 figure was 9.8%, but Eurostat widened the question set for the 2025 wave, so the two years are not a clean time series.

Sources

Published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which makes production-monitoring and OEE software. Every figure is sourced on the page. Funding rules, standards and reporting duties change: check the official documents before you budget or commit.