We study the étale cohomology of Hilbert modular varieties, building on the methods introduced by Caraiani and Scholze for unitary Shimura varieties. We obtain the analogous vanishing theorem: in the ‘generic’ case, the cohomology with torsion coefficients is concentrated in the middle degree. We also probe the structure of the cohomology beyond the generic case, obtaining bounds on the range of degrees where cohomology with torsion coefficients can be non-zero. The proof is based on the geometric Jacquet–Langlands functoriality established by Tian and Xiao and avoids trace formula computations for the cohomology of Igusa varieties. As an application, we show that, when p splits completely in the totally real field and under certain technical assumptions, the p-adic local Langlands correspondence for GL2(Qp) occurs in the completed homology of Hilbert modular varieties.