Spain welcomed thousands of Romanians in the 2000s: now they are returning to Romania, leaving a void in the labor market

During the 2000s, Spain was the host country for many Romanian citizens. With the real estate bubble about to burst and a financial crisis looming, the outlook in Spain was still better than that of the Romanian economy. Now, almost three decades later, those emigrants return to a growing Romania, leaving Spain without a valuable skilled workforce.

The Romanian exodus. According to Eurostat data, between 2010 and 2013, Romania's population decreased by more than two million people. A good part of these people had emigrated to countries such as Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria or Israel.

According to INE data on the foreign population residing in Spain from June 2013, the Romanian community was the largest in 2012 with 798,970 people of that nationality, closely followed by the Moroccan nationality with 771,632 people. The latest data available for December 2025 reveals that, currently, the population of Romanians residing in Spain barely exceeds 609,270 people and has fallen to the third largest community in the country.

Qualified workforce. Most of those migrants who arrived in Spain in the early years of the 2000s did so fleeing unemployment and the poor economic situation in sectors such as construction or agriculture in Romania.

These new workers were incorporated as labor for those sectors in Spain, and the second generation of these citizens was trained to become qualified labor for the Spanish labor market.

The Romanian miracle. In recent years, the economic situation in Romania has taken a turn. "When the Romanians overthrew its regime in a rapid (and violent) revolt in December 1989, it was one of the poorest countries in Soviet-dominated Europe. That is no longer the case. After a slow start, Romania's free-market reforms took effect. The country's economy has quadrupled in size since 1989, and it has joined NATO and the EU," said Daniel Fried, former US ambassador to Poland in a report for the Atlantic Council.

According to data from the World Bank, Romania's GDP Per Capita adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP) has gone from $13,313 in 1990 to $40,666 in 2023, compared to the $31,639 that Spain registered in 1990 and the $47,142 in 2023. The most notable difference in the GDP of both countries was recorded precisely in the period of greatest migration of Romanians to Spain, between the years 2000 and 2012. This is what Csaba Balint, member of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Romania (BNR), described as the "golden era" of the Romanian economy.

Returning home: exodus 2.0. After the invasion of Ukraine, Romania's economic boom and GDP growth has slowed, but continues at a rate of 0.7% in 2025. However, this upward trend has created the means so that those first migrants who arrived in Spain in the 2000s can return to their country, just as the Spaniards who emigrated in the 60s and 70s returned years later.

According to INE migration data, only between 2024 and 2025 the population of foreigners with Romanian nationality was reduced by 11,193 people, chaining the downward trend of recent years.

This workforce is now much better trained and more productive than the one that arrived at the beginning of the millennium. The return of Romanian citizens to their country is one more factor in the labor shortage in the construction sector, since a good part of this migrant population were bricklayers, carpenters, electricians or plumbers and they filled those positions that are now left without generational replacement.

A version of this article was published in January 2025

Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, Mina Rad)