Spain led job creation in the European Union last year, creating four out of every ten new jobs generated throughout the EU. And the large listed companies have replicated this pattern: the Ibex 35 companies were the ones that created the most jobs among those that make up the four major stock market indicators in Europe: the Spanish one along with the German DAX 40, the French CAC 40 and the FTSE MIB 40 in Italy.
The EY-Parthenon Employment Barometer - prepared with 2025 data, based on sustainability information published by 155 companies included in these four stock market indices - shows that the multinationals of the Spanish Ibex 35 increased their global workforce by 0.9% during 2025, after incorporating around 11,600 workers. Almost at the same level as the Spanish index were the large listed companies in Italy, which generated 10,900 jobs (an identical 0.9% more). Quite the contrary, the German companies in the DAX 40 reduced their workforce by 1.2%, which meant the destruction of 46,000 jobs; while the French companies registered a slight decrease of 0.2% (7,905 fewer employees than the previous year).
Together, the companies listed in these four indices employ more than 11.3 million people worldwide, of which approximately 6.8 million work in Europe. In this scenario, and despite the good performance of the companies in the Spanish and Italian indices, the net employment balance of the four stock markets was negative. Workers in large listed companies went from having a global workforce of 11,380,433 workers in 2024 to 11,348,920 in 2025, which represents a net reduction of 31,513 jobs, due to the impact of job destruction in the German selective.
The cuts by the large German listed companies affected both their headquarters in Germany (−1.0%) and their subsidiaries abroad (−1.3%). In the French case, the staff reduction was mainly concentrated in the national market (−1.4%), while abroad the drop was −0.3%.
For its part, the employment growth of Spanish multinationals was sustained exclusively in the domestic sphere, despite the fact that these large Spanish companies have a strongly internationalized profile, where 74% of their employees work outside Spain and only 26% at the national headquarters, as detailed in this report. Thus, in its headquarters throughout Spain, staff grew by 1.8% compared to a drop of almost 1% in its centers abroad. In fact, Spain was the only country of the four selected countries analyzed that netly increased employment on its own soil, registering 64% of its companies creating employment within the country.
According to this analysis, if we analyze only what happened within Europe, the loss of employment was substantially greater: with a cut of 78,500 jobs (−1.1%). Although the global net figure was less large (31,513 fewer jobs before e) thanks to the increases in the workforce that these same multinationals registered in their subsidiaries in North America and Asia-Pacific.
The strength of the aerospace and defense sector
This circumstance shows, according to the authors of this study, that "beyond the positive behavior of Spain, [there is] an underlying trend: that employment growth is progressively shifting towards these areas of North America and Asia, in a scenario of growing global competition for investment, talent and productivity." However, they also detect "a greater capacity for adaptation on the part of Spanish companies in the face of accelerated technological changes and the need to transform production models."
In general, the study indicates the sectors, of the 19 analyzed, that generated the most jobs by the large listed companies in these four countries. The most dynamic activity in creating jobs was aerospace and defense, which, driven by the strong increase in budgets in this area in Europe, marked by NATO, increased its workforce by 4.3% in 2025, with 27,500 more positions. This was followed by the 2.9% increase recorded by the workforce in the capital goods sector, boosted, according to these analysts, by the order books behind reindustrialization and investments linked to the energy transition. In third place, information technology saw its work teams increase by 2.1%. Other dynamic sectors, although to a much lesser extent, were: real estate, which increased its workers by 1.6% last year in the European Union; financial services (1.3% more employees); construction and engineering, with 1% more; health, another 1% more; and public services, with an increase of 0.5% in their workforce.
The report does not detail the behavior of the sectors in each country analyzed, but taking into account that Spain located all its net job creation on national soil, it is relevant to know which sectors led the creation of jobs in the European centers. These were capital goods, with a growth in the Union headquarters of 5.3%; transportation (4.1% more in European offices); and the aerospace and defense industry (3.8% more in the EU alone).
The impact of AI, starting in 2027
In any case, the study launches a wake-up call by warning that the impact of artificial intelligence is still not fully reflected in the employment figures analyzed. At the moment, the data analyzed only shows “a phase of investment and experimentation, characterized by the hiring of specialists and the launch of pilot projects,” they specify. But they warn that "the most profound effects on work organization and personnel needs will likely occur between 2027 and 2028, when companies move to mass adoption of these technologies."
Specifically, they predict that from those years on, AI will have a greater impact in areas such as administration, research and development, engineering, customer service, purchasing, or operations and production planning. Although according to this analysis, the impact, more than a simple reduction in workforce, will consist of a profound reallocation of workers' capabilities, for which retraining will be a decisive factor, the authors of the analysis anticipate. And they conclude that this transformation “will drive important gains in productivity and efficiency, reduce the weight of certain repetitive and administrative tasks and generate new professional profiles linked to data, the supervision of intelligent systems and business transformation.”
