AT the close of 2004 there were 38'642 foreigners legally working in the Balearic Islands, of these 16'858 come from European Union countries, according to information published yesterday by the Employment and Social Security Department.
The number of legal foreign workers is equal to 3.6 percent of the total foreign workers in Spain. From these figures taken on 31 December, 24'024 were men (62.7 percent) and 14'618 women (37.17 percent). By industrial sectors, one in four foreigners in the Balearic Islands works in the construction industry (7'124 workers, 27.3 percent), making it the leading industry. It is followed by the hotel industry with 4'973 (19 percent), the commercial industry (3'875, 15 percent), the housing industry (3'386, 13 percent) and the manufacturing industry (1'874, 7.19 percent).
Three out of four workers are classified as employees (26'667), whilst 9'047 are self-employed (19 percent), 2'466 work at home, 995 work on farms (2.5 percent) and 67 on boats (0.5 percent).
Whereas there is only a slight difference between the number of workers from the European Union who are classified as employees (9'405) and those that are self-employed (7'146), the situation is somewhat different for those workers not from the EU. Most of these workers opt to work as employees (16'662), compared to only 1'901 who are self-employed .
Germany leads the list of countries that has more workers legally working on the islands (6'427). It is also the only country that has more people who are self-employed (3'314) as opposed to being employees (3'012).
Morocco follows Germany with 4'736 workers, then Ecuador (3'568), United Kingdom (3'544), Italy (2'669), Colombia (2'184), Argentina (1'982), France (1'360), Bulgaria (806), China (795), Nigeria (595) and Peru (554).
The information correlated by the Government shows that there is a high percentage of workers from the EU countries that are self-employed.
This is also true for some of the non-European countries that have few workers registered at the Social Security Department. For example China has 526 people legally working in the Balearic Islands and of these 258 are self-employed.
Senegal also has a reasonably high percentage of workers that are self-employed (87), considering its total number of workers is only 527.
However, on the other hand, there do feature many countries that have large numbers of legal workers in the Balearic Islands but with very few of them classified as self-employed, such as Ecuador with only 52 self-employed workers and Colombia (85).
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