A report from Randstad, the human resources consulting-employment agencies group, says that the Balearic tourism sector employed an average of just under 140,000 people between June and August, an increase of almost 5% over last year and significantly up on 2008 when there was an average of nearly 116,000. July was the best of the three months, there having been 142,000 employees.
Nationwide, there was an average of 1,584,399 people working in the tourism sector. This represented an increase of 4.4% over last year and was 10% higher than in 2008. In July the figure topped the 1.6 million mark for the first time ever.
All regions of the country are said to have experienced increases in tourism-sector employment, with the greatest increases occurring in Madrid, Andalusia and Valencia - from 5.5% to 6.2% - making the rise in the Balearics the fourth highest in percentage terms, which was above the national average.
The lowest increases were in regions without notable sun-and-beach tourism or massive city tourism (as in Madrid). Climate, geographical location and an abundance of recreation and restaurants (as well as hotels) naturally combine to give greater employment opportunities, and so Catalonia and Andalusia are the regions with the highest numbers of workers in the tourism sector - over 260,000 in each case, or one out of every three workers. In Madrid, Valencia, the Canaries and the Balearics, the figure is between 125,000 and 185,000.