The government has discovered a statistical masterstroke that lets three out of every four new occupied workers appear foreign while the underlying economy stays exactly the same. With 1,174,978 regularisation applications filed, officials can now point to rising employment totals and declare victory over unemployment without having to produce a single additional payroll cheque.

In 2018 they promised orderly labour-market integration that would lift wages and reduce informality. It is now 2026. The integration metric that matters most is how many previously invisible workers can be moved onto the official count before the next election.

Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration Elma Saiz, one small detail: the article in El Español notes that critics view the new occupied figures as mostly paperwork for people already working off the books. The regularisation drive therefore converts existing activity into headline data rather than expanding the actual volume of taxed, legal work.

Spare a thought for the statistics office, which must now recalculate growth rates every time another batch of applications clears while commuters in the same neighbourhoods still face the same overcrowded trains and unchanged rent levels. The ministry gains a convenient narrative; the underlying mismatch between population and productive capacity does not move.

Three consequences follow in orderly sequence. First, reported employment rises without a corresponding rise in taxable hours. Second, the government can claim progress on integration while deportation orders for rejected applicants remain largely unenforced. Third, the next budget round will still confront the same pension and health-care arithmetic that produced the original labour shortages. Each step is presented as evidence of success.

The pattern is familiar across the peninsula. When legal channels for skilled migration stay narrow, mass regularisation becomes the default valve. When the valve opens, yesterday’s informal workers become today’s statistical triumph. The only variable that changes is the press release.

The minister has therefore solved the presentation problem. Actual job creation can wait for another administration.