Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to have an impact on the labor market in Barcelona. A study by the Mobile World Capital of Barcelona points out that junior job offers in the digital sector have fallen by 26% in two years, dropping from 1,448 to 1,058 listings between 2023 and 2025.
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“There is an obvious correlation between the emergence of this technology and the drop in job offers. AI automates functions and is capable of creating code from scratch. This has reduced the need to hire young staff,” acknowledged the report’s author, Jordi Arrufí, this morning.
On the other hand, the demand for jobs for more experienced professionals has increased. Specifically, it has risen by 22% for workers with medium experience, reaching 29,698 offers, and has grown by 15% for senior workers, up to 6,624.
Digital employment in Barcelona has grown by almost 5% in 2025, reaching 135,890 workers
“We observe that the digital sector labor market has become more technical and complex. Companies are increasingly demanding specialists, and this is creating a bottleneck in the labor market: juniors need to be employed to have seniors,” notes Arrufí, who has urged the public sector to find solutions.
In any case, the overall evolution of technological employment in Barcelona has shown a positive trend in 2025. Specifically, there has been a growth of 4.85% reaching a total of 135,890 hired professionals. In perspective, this is a somewhat more stabilized growth compared to the post-pandemic years, when digital employment surged due to an investment boom in the sector.
However, demand remains strained: for every digital sector offer published in 2025, a total of 14 candidates have emerged, while the usual labor market ratio is 1 offer per 60 available professionals.
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The report reveals that the most demanded profiles have been web developers, application developers, cloud specialists, CRM, and Agile specialists. So far, AI is not among this category. In 2025, 1,079 offers for specialists in this emerging technology have been registered, while 850 offers were published the previous year.
The Barcelona ecosystem has registered 1,079 offers related to AI
Startups and technology consultancies have led the job offers, while multinationals with digital hubs have slowed hiring by -5% after years of growth. However, in absolute numbers, large companies have driven digital employment: Aubay, Amaris, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Allianz, NTT Data, Seidor…
The report indicates, once again, the marked international profile of digital workers: one in three comes from outside Barcelona, from cities such as London, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, or Sao Paulo. Likewise, the study reveals that only one-third of workers are women. This is a percentage very similar to the previous year and shows slow progress towards gender parity in the sector.
Regarding salaries, they have risen by almost 5% in 2025, reaching 51,000 euros annually. Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud profiles have been the best paid, with average salaries around 60,000 euros per year.
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