Spain's public employment services, region by region

Most guides to working in Spain mention SEPE and stop. That is half the picture, and the missing half is the one with the vacancies in it.

HOW IT IS ACTUALLY ORGANISED

SEPE, the Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal, is the national body. It handles unemployment benefit, the national framework, and the Empléate portal.

But employment policy in Spain is devolved to the autonomous communities. Each runs its own employment service, with its own vacancy database, its own subsidised training, and its own hiring incentives. Plenty of vacancies never leave the regional portal, and plenty of training is only available through it.

So: register nationally, and register regionally. They are not the same thing, and the regional one is usually the more useful of the two day to day.

WHY REGISTERING MATTERS EVEN IF YOU HAVE A JOB

Three reasons that have nothing to do with browsing vacancies.

Training. Subsidised courses — languages, trade certifications, digital skills — are allocated through the regional services and are often free to registered jobseekers. They are substantially better value than the private equivalents.

Your benefit record. If you later claim unemployment benefit, your registration and contribution record is what the claim is assessed against. That record starts when you register.

Hiring incentives. Employers get subsidies for hiring people in certain registered categories. Being registered can make you cheaper to hire, which is not nothing.

THE SERVICES

Find yours, register in person or online, and keep the registration current.

Andalucía
SAE — Servicio Andaluz de Empleo
https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/organismos/empleoempresaytrabajoautonomo.html
Andalucía has the largest workforce of any Spanish region and its own vacancy and training system.

Aragón
INAEM — Instituto Aragonés de Empleo
https://inaem.aragon.es/

Asturias
Trabajastur — Servicio Público de Empleo del Principado de Asturias
https://www.asturias.es/

Illes Balears
SOIB — Servei d'Ocupació de les Illes Balears
https://soib.es/
Balearic vacancies are heavily seasonal; SOIB is where the hotel and yachting season hiring is registered.

Canarias
Servicio Canario de Empleo
https://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/empleo/

Cantabria
Empleacantabria — Servicio Cántabro de Empleo
https://www.empleacantabria.es/

Castilla-La Mancha
Empleo y Formación — Castilla-La Mancha
https://empleoyformacion.jccm.es/

Castilla y León
ECYL — Servicio Público de Empleo de Castilla y León
https://empleo.jcyl.es/

Catalunya
SOC — Servei Públic d'Ocupació de Catalunya
https://serveiocupacio.gencat.cat/
Catalunya runs its own service in parallel with SEPE, with its own listings and training programmes.

Extremadura
SEXPE — Servicio Extremeño Público de Empleo
https://extremaduratrabaja.juntaex.es/

Galicia
Emprego — Xunta de Galicia
https://emprego.xunta.gal/

La Rioja
La Rioja — empleo y formación
https://www.larioja.org/empleo/es

Comunidad de Madrid
Comunidad de Madrid — empleo
https://www.comunidad.madrid/servicios/empleo

Región de Murcia
SEF — Servicio Regional de Empleo y Formación de Murcia
https://www.sefcarm.es/

Navarra
Servicio Navarro de Empleo
https://www.navarra.es/

País Vasco
Lanbide — Servicio Vasco de Empleo
https://www.lanbide.euskadi.eus/
Basque Country wages are among the highest in Spain; Lanbide is the regional service and also runs training and Euskera support.

Comunitat Valenciana
LABORA — Servei Valencià d'Ocupació i Formació
https://labora.gva.es/

Ceuta and Melilla are administered directly by SEPE.

THE NATIONAL BODIES

SEPE — Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal
https://www.sepe.es/
The national public employment service: unemployment benefit, training, and the national job portal. The authoritative starting point for anyone working in Spain.

Empléate — national job portal
https://www.empleate.gob.es/empleo/
SEPE's public vacancy portal, aggregating offers from the regional services and private partners.

BOE — public sector job calls (oposiciones)
https://www.boe.es/biblioteca_juridica/anuarios_derecho/
Every public sector competitive examination in Spain is published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado. A substantial share of Spanish employment is entered this way and it appears on no commercial job board.

datos.gob.es — Spanish open data portal
https://datos.gob.es/
The government open data catalogue. Not a vacancy feed, but the index through which regional employment datasets are published — worth scanning for new machine-readable sources.

Auxiliares de Conversación — Ministerio de Educación
https://www.educacionfpydeportes.gob.es/servicios-al-ciudadano/catalogo/profesorado/profesorado-extranjero/auxiliares-conversacion/auxiliares-extranjeros-espana.html
The national language assistant programme: a fixed monthly stipend, a part-time timetable, and a visa route. Applications open in the new year for an October start.

AND THE EUROPEAN ONE

EURES — European job mobility portal
https://europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home
The EU-wide public vacancy network, carrying offers from every member state public employment service including Spain. The largest single source of official Spanish vacancies.

PRACTICAL NOTES

Appointments are booked online (cita previa) and in the larger cities they book out well ahead. Start earlier than feels necessary.

Bring your NIE, your social security number, your empadronamiento certificate and your qualifications. Bring more paper than you think you need; that is the general rule for Spanish administration and it has never once been wrong.

Several regions operate in a co-official language alongside Spanish — Catalan, Basque, Galician, Valencian. The services all work in Spanish too, but the regional language is an advantage for public sector roles and for anything customer-facing.