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SearchThe Labour Inspectorate recorded its highest number of regularizations of bogus self-employed workers since this series began in 2018. Increased inspections of digital platforms and Glovo’s change of business model are among the factors associated with the rise.
The Labour and Social Security Inspectorate regularized 47,143 bogus self-employed workers in 2025, according to its annual report. This is the highest figure in the available series for this type of action, which began in 2018, and is more than six times the 7,234 regularizations recorded in 2024. Some headlines round the figure, referring to 47,000 or 47,200 people.
Bogus self-employed workers are people who, although formally classified as self-employed professionals, in practice have an employment relationship that corresponds to paid employment. The Inspectorate attributes a large share of the regularizations to increased inspections of digital platforms with a national presence, where this type of hiring can affect many people.
The annual report states that the regularizations were mainly due to increased inspections of platforms that use these arrangements. Media coverage also links the increase to Glovo’s transition from a model based on self-employed workers to hiring delivery workers as employees. This change took place in 2025, although the available data do not make it possible to attribute all the year’s regularizations to a single company or activity.
Monitoring is not limited to food delivery. Trade unions have warned of the spread of platform-based work models in other services, such as cleaning, psychology and legal services. This development points to areas where scrutiny of employment relationships may increase, but it does not mean that specific regularizations have been recorded in each of them.
The regularizations of bogus self-employed workers formed part of a total of 96,194 registrations with Social Security promoted through the Inspectorate’s actions. The annual report also breaks down 48,450 registrations involving people who had not been registered and 601 cases of bogus interns. These are distinct categories within the total, not figures that should be added again to the 47,143 regularizations.
Inspection activity also produced other results. Around 208,500 violations were detected and penalties amounting to €858.2 million were proposed, compared with €541 million in 2024. The Inspectorate carried out inspections at 427,495 workplaces, and its reporting portal received 11,824 submissions during the year.
Taken together, the data reflect increased monitoring activity and a rise in regularizations, but the annual report does not attribute all the results to a single cause. For businesses, the key point is the scope of scrutiny over the correct classification of employment relationships, particularly in sectors and business models that use digital platforms.
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