Morocco’s weak labor market and limited rural opportunities are pushing tens of thousands of citizens toward seasonal jobs in Europe. The government is now deeply involved in organizing and supervising this migration as an economic safety valve.
Speaking before the House of Representatives on July 6, 2026, Employment Minister Younes Sekkouri said the number of Moroccan women recruited annually under the seasonal work scheme in Spain now ranges between 14,000 and 18,000, up from roughly 2,000 to 3,000 a decade ago. Most come from rural areas where local jobs are scarce and wages low. Short-term contracts in Spanish agriculture remain one of the few ways to earn cash and support families back home.
The government’s involvement serves two goals: managing labor supply at home and reducing the risks workers face abroad. Sekkouri said Rabat, working with Madrid, has modified worker-selection procedures and introduced four-year visas to simplify repeat travel. More than 81% of workers now return to Morocco at the end of the harvest season, a metric authorities cite to argue the scheme remains circular rather than a path to permanent emigration.
At the same time, the expansion of the program has exposed Moroccan women to real vulnerabilities. Investigations by rights groups and Spanish media have documented poor housing conditions and sexual harassment in parts of the Spanish strawberry sector. Sekkouri acknowledged that problems persist and require increased support. He pointed to pre-departure awareness and training sessions for first-time participants, and said he had recently met directly with employers in Huelva province, which accounts for around 90% of Moroccan seasonal farm workers in Spain, to discuss the difficulties workers face there.
Sekkouri said cooperation with Spain is meant to guarantee healthcare coverage and health cards upon arrival, rather than access conditioned on the start of work. Coordination now runs through Morocco’s embassy in Spain and its consulate in Seville, alongside meetings with Spanish counterparts. Bilateral agreements already include these safeguards on paper. Building real enforcement in remote farm areas, where workers can be isolated and dependent on employers, remains the harder task.
A separate domestic picture
Morocco’s outward seasonal migration connects to gaps in the domestic labor market, which Sekkouri has addressed in other, separate parliamentary appearances this year. On non-diploma holders, the government has expanded a dual training program with 20% classroom instruction and 80% hands-on practice, to include young people who lack formal qualifications, a group historically excluded from public job-insertion schemes. Sekkouri cited a budget exceeding 1.5 billion dirhams for this alternating training track, which he said had raised the number of annual beneficiaries to more than 50,000, up from roughly 9,000 previously. This figure is tied to a specific, dated program. A separate 2 billion dirham fund Sekkouri has referenced elsewhere covers small-business support, a different pool of money for a different purpose.
On wages, Morocco’s minimum wage has risen in stages under the April 2024 tripartite agreement between government, unions, and employers, which set two consecutive 5% increases for both the non-agricultural minimum wage (SMIG) and the agricultural minimum wage (SMAG). By Sekkouri’s own account in a May 2025 address, the cumulative effect since the government took office in 2021 amounts to roughly a 20% increase in the non-agricultural minimum wage. Agricultural wages are rising at a faster pace to narrow the gap between the two by 2028.
On public-works employment, Morocco continues to run programs like Awrach, launched to absorb workers who lost jobs during the pandemic or struggle to access formal employment in remote and border regions. Sekkouri has said these programs cannot deliver durable results without parallel growth in productive investment. Subsidies and temporary contracts, in his framing, are a stopgap rather than a long-term fix.
Investment and productivity in rural Morocco remain limited. Seasonal migration to Europe will likely stay one of the few available outlets for thousands of workers, and the government will keep trying to manage it, both to protect its citizens and to ease pressure on the domestic labor market.
