The Spanish economy is growing strongly, but there is a risk that many people are being left behind. Unemployment, especially among young people and the low-skilled, remains very high. About half of all the unemployed have been unemployed for over a year and one third for more than two years. A quarter of all those who are employed are on temporary jobs. Since the global economic crisis, poverty and inequality have increased. An immediate priority is to ensure adequate income support for those most in need. Getting more people into better jobs is crucial to raise living standards and to reduce poverty. In terms of structural policies, this requires continuing to improve activation policies, such as training and job placement, re-skilling and up-skilling the unemployed, preventing youth from leaving the education system under-qualified and better on-the-job-training. More can be done to foster the creation of better quality jobs by reducing barriers to hiring and addressing labour market duality.

Spain has chronically low productivity growth, which undermines its ability to generate higher living standards. Important contributors to low productivity growth are the misallocation of capital to low productivity firms and under-investment in knowledge-based capital. To foster a better allocation of capital a first priority is to better tune bank, capital market and government financing to the needs of new innovative firms. This could be done through better small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) bond and loan securitisation tools, reallocating public financing to early stage finance and making it easier for firms to access public innovation funding by shifting some funding from loans to grants for research and development (R&D) projects. Attracting more foreign capital and improving the regulatory framework to increase the return on investment would also help. This could be done by reducing regulatory barriers that hold back competition, improving the neutrality of the tax system, improving pricing signals and reforming insolvency laws.