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FOESSA Report Finds Spain’s Middle Class Shrinking as Social Exclusion Deepens

New FOESSA data identifies housing pressures alongside precarious jobs as the core drivers of the shift.

Overview

  • FOESSA’s ninth report estimates about 4.3 million people in severe exclusion in 2024, a level 52% higher than in 2007.
  • Rental risk has surged, with 45% of tenants at risk of poverty or exclusion, a dynamic the study describes as a rental poverty trap.
  • Job insecurity now affects 47.5% of the active workforce—roughly 11.5 million people—undermining work’s protective role as one third of excluded people are employed.
  • Madrid illustrates “ineffective wealth,” recording a 19.6% exclusion rate despite high GDP per capita and low monetary poverty risk.
  • Income poverty rates remain broadly stable nationally (about 12.8%), while exclusion rises and disproportionately affects children, youth, women, and migrants, including 2.5 million young people in structural precarity.