Workers aged over 64 in Malaga are on the increase with the number doubling since Covid pandemic

Furthermore, the workforce aged over 54, both in the province and across the whole of Spain, has recorded a significant rise in recent years

Cristina Vallejo

Malaga

Monday, 21 April 2025, 12:24

In Spain the labour market as a whole has been characterised by intense growth in recent years following the coronavirus pandemic. Since March 2019, the last "normal" year prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, the number of Social Security affiliates in Malaga province has risen from just over 611,000 to almost 720,000 today. This represents a rise of more than 17%, a larger increase than for Spain as a whole where the increase in employment is estimated at 12%. The rise specifically for women exceeds 20% at close to 344,000 workers, while in the case of men the rise is 15.5% to over 375,500.

Nevertheless, all these figures pale in comparison with the rise in number for a very specific segment of Malaga's workforce: those over 64 years of age who are registered as gainfully employed. Back in March 2019 there were less than 6,700 in this age group. Now, in 2025, they number over 14,000, which means that their number has more than doubled, a growth of almost 110% since the pre-pandemic year.

This phenomenon is not isolated to Malaga alone as it has happened in a generalised manner throughout the country. Across Spain, employment among the over-64s has increased by 103% to over 423,000, a big step up from the 208,000 recorded in 2019. Of course, in some provinces the increase has been much higher, such as in Cuenca (161%), León (137%), and similarly in Almeria, Granada, Huelva and Jaen, where the figure has risen by around 135%.

Malaga is the fifth province in Spain with the highest number of people over the age of 64 in active employment and affiliated to Social Security, behind only Madrid (almost 70,000), Barcelona (almost 53,000), Valencia (over 20,600) and Alicante (15,800). Malaga surpasses Seville in terms of the number of workers in their 60s: 14,060 people from Malaga, compared with 12,720 from Seville. This is despite the fact that the overall labour market in Seville is larger than that of Malaga province: Malaga has a total of around 720,000 people affiliated to the Social Security system, compared to more than 825,000 in Seville.

In terms of gender, there is another curious phenomenon, and that is that female Social Security affiliates over the age of 64 have increased by 121% since the pandemic in the province, compared to an increase of 101% for men, although there are still fewer women (6,597) than men (7,463).

The key to pension reform

Spain's 2012 pension reform, which brought with it a gradual increase in the retirement age, has had an impact on these developments. The year 2012 was the last year in which the legal retirement age gave those at 65 the right to receive 100% of their pension. By 2013 the retirement age had already been raised to 65 years and one month. Now, in 2025 it will be 66 years and ten months and in 2027 it will be 67 years.

45% increase in Social Security affiliates aged over 54

So now there are 147,970 over-54s compared to 101,704 in March 2019. In this period they have gone from representing 16.5% of the workforce in Malaga to 21.5%, but in some parts of Spain they already exceed 30%.

Furthermore, the workforce in Malaga (and in the whole country) aged over 54 has recorded a significant rise in recent years. In March 2025 the number of people affiliated to Social Security in this age group was close to 148,000, which represents a growth of 45% compared to the figure for 2019, when it barely exceeded 100,000. What this implies is that workers over 54 years of age that are active in the labour market are growing at more than twice the rate of the labour force as a whole. In addition, as with the general population, the number of female workers is also growing more than for male workers in these age groups: 48% compared to 43%, although this growth is still catching up to the men (around 78,400 male workers to under 70,000 female workers).

Therefore, if in 2019 workers over 54 years of age accounted for 16.5% of the total labour force in Malaga, they now represent 20.5%. Also in Spain as a whole this age group has jumped from the 17.8% proportion they occupied in the labour market in 2019 to now take up 22%. By comparing these figures we can deduce that the Spanish labour market is slightly older than that of Malaga.

Zamora is the province with the highest proportion of workers over 54 years of age: 30.5% of the total. In fact, it is the provinces of Castile and León, as well as some of those of Galicia and Extremadura, where the working population is the oldest, with more than 25% of those affiliated to Social Security still working well into their fifties. At the other extreme are Huelva, Madrid, Barcelona, Almeria, Seville, Malaga, Murcia and Valencia, with proportions ranging from 19% to 21%.

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