INTERES Invest in Spain

Training and employment incentives form part of the Spanish government’s job creation policy, and are currently delivering major savings in labor costs to the employers receiving them.

In particular, the “Vocational Training for Employment Subscheme”, regulated in Royal Decree 395/2007, encompasses a set of instruments and actions aimed at encouraging and extending to companies and to employed and unemployed workers a type of training that meets their needs and contributes to the development of a knowledge-based economy (i.e. demand-based training, supply-based training, training alternating with work; programs to support and accompany training).

These programs include most notably the credit allocated to employers for demand-based vocational training, collected in the form of reductions in social security contributions and subdivided into two types: (i) credit for carrying out own training programs and (ii) credit for granting workers individual leaves of absence for training (additional to the preceding credit, up to the limit stipulated annually in the General State Budgets Law).

The creation of indefinite-term employment is also encouraged with the granting of aid to employers, consisting mainly of reductions in social security contributions, aimed at fostering the hiring of new employees on a stable or indefinite-term basis (especially targeted at unemployed persons included in groups such as women in general, young people between 16 and 30 years of age, long-term unemployed persons, unemployed persons over the age of 45, individuals receiving the unemployment benefit under the Social Security Special Agricultural Scheme and the disabled) and, in certain cases, promoting the conversion of temporary jobs into indefinite-term jobs.

Other aid and additional subsidies (i.e. up to not more than €5,108 per job filled with an indefinite-term employee) may be granted to investment projects aimed at the generation of economic activities and stable jobs in Spanish local and regional areas able to be classed by the National Public Employment Service (INEM) as investment and employment (I&E) projects or employers. Such projects must be promoted by local governments through the relevant contribution of economic and/or material resources, although the INEM is in charge of processing applications, choosing the projects and granting the aid.

For more information on Aid and incentives, please download the following document: