Employment in Spain in the first quarter of the year fell by 11,100 people, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) published yesterday by the National Statistics Institute. This is the slightest reduction in a first quarter since 2007 and much lower than that registered last year, when employment in the country fell by 100,200 people. But, even so, it is a drop in employment that has been disappointing given how well affiliation has evolved, since 80,000 workers have been gained in the same period, according to Social Security.
Despite the net loss of 11,100 jobs, differences can be seen depending on the type of working day: the number of workers with a part-time contract increased by 23,600 people, while that of full-time employees fell by 34,800 people.
The same has been confirmed this Friday by the INE when disclosing the National Accounts data, where it explains that "employment in the economy, in terms of hours worked, registers a quarter-on-quarter variation of 0.4%. This rate is of a lesser magnitude in the case of full-time equivalent jobs (0.1%, similar to that of the fourth quarter) due to the lower growth of average full-time days (0.2%) compared to growth of hours worked".
In particular, the number of part-time workers increased because they follow education and training courses (41,300 more than in the last quarter of 2022), those who do not work full-time because they have to take care of children or dependent adults (18,900 more), those with family or personal obligations (23,000) or those who have not been able to find full-time work (5,700). On the contrary, the number of workers who work part-time due to illness or disability and those who do not want to work full-time have decreased.
With the evolution of the first quarter, the number of workers in Spain stands at 20,452,800, 5% above the level registered in the first quarter of 2019 -the last one before the pandemic-. However, this gain in workers is not equivalent to the increase that has occurred in the total hours actually worked in Spain, precisely because of the increase in the proportion of temporary or part-time contracts. Hours worked have risen 3.45% since that first quarter of 2019.
Despite the fact that they have not grown at the same rate since then, in this first quarter the number of effective gross hours worked grew above the average of the first quarters since 2008 and at a magnitude similar to that observed a year ago.
"The increase in permanent contracts is one of the great news for employment in recent months. However, the market is showing some alarm signals that should be addressed. This is the case of the decrease in productive hours or the growing trend of underemployment among the indefinitely employed population", they warn from InfoJobs.
Private companies were mainly responsible for the fall in employment in the first quarter (8,800 fewer jobs), although there was also a loss in the public sector (2,300 fewer workers than in the fourth quarter). By sector, industry suffered the greatest loss of jobs (11,200 fewer), followed by agriculture (5,000) and construction (2,700 fewer workers), although these falls were offset by hiring in the service sector, where they were gained 7,800 jobs.
By autonomous community, the Balearic Islands was the one that lost the most workers (38,600 fewer employed persons), followed by Castilla y León (-21,400) and the Canary Islands (-13,600), while the regions with the greatest job creation were Andalusia (66,300 more). , the Community of Madrid (31,400) and Aragon (7,300).
The first quarter was especially positive for women, since employment increased with 41,700 more employed, while the number of men with work fell by 52,800 people. Differences by nationality were also appreciated, since while the number of Spaniards with work fell by 37,900 people, that of foreigners with a job increased by 26,800.
By age, mainly young people under 25 years of age (16,000 fewer employed persons) and people between 40 and 44 years of age (-55,600) lost their jobs, while employment increased for those over 50 years of age -the largest increase, of 40,500 employed persons , was for those over 55 years old- and those between 25 and 34.
One of the positive data on employment is the drop in temporary employment that has occurred since the approval of the labor reform and, especially, among young people.
The number of workers with a temporary contract fell by 3.7% in the first quarter to 2.9 million people; while that of indefinite ones rose 0.6% to 14.35 million. This decrease, however, was concentrated in the private sector, where the number of temporary workers fell by 154,200 people, which brought the temporary employment rate to the all-time low of 13.7%. Meanwhile, it continued to rise in the public sector to stand at 31.3%, with 37,200 new temporary workers, almost four times more than the 8% target promised to the European Commission.
Young people were the ones who benefited the most from the drop in temporary employment, since the percentage of people under 30 with a temporary contract dropped from 52% in the first quarter of 2022 to 36% this year. For those between 30 and 44 years old, temporary employment went from 24% to 17%, and for those aged 45 or over, the least affected, it went from 15% to 12%. By sectors, construction was the one that registered the greatest decrease, of 13 points; followed by agriculture, with a decrease of 11 points. The latter is the one with the highest rate of temporary employment.
"We view with concern the high rate of temporary employment in public employment, specifically 31.3%, which contrasts with the decrease in temporary contracts registered in the private sector. We demand prudence from the Government and that it stop triumphalism in the face of the situation of economic uncertainty and the needs of thousands of Spanish families", they point out from CSIF.
The positive employment data was clouded yesterday by the unemployment, since, according to the EPA, the number of unemployed in the country rose by 103,800 people in the first quarter, the largest increase for that period in the last ten years if not 2020 is taken into account - an exercise in which, due to the shock caused by the pandemic, 120,000 jobs were destroyed in the first quarter. You have to go back to 2013 to find a more negative year than this in terms of unemployment, when the number of unemployed increased by 257,200 people.
This increase left the final number of unemployed in the country at 3,127,800 people and took the unemployment rate from 12.87% to 13.26%, while the number of households that have all their active members unemployed increased by 7,800, up to a total of 1,055,300.
"The situation of households in terms of unemployment is currently in a worse scenario than it was immediately before the pandemic: in the last quarter of 2019, 7.49% of households with active members had all of them unemployed, and that proportion is currently 7.60%", alert from Randstad Research.
The main explanation for this strong increase in the number of unemployed is the increase in the active population, that is, there are now more people willing to work in the country. This is something positive, since the new unemployed are not, for the most part, people who have lost their jobs, but people who did not work before and now want a job.
Specifically, the number of active people has risen by 92,700 people, the largest increase in a first quarter since 2008 -when 150,500 people joined-, bringing the active population to 23,580,500 people.
The profile of that person who now wants to enter the labor market is that of a foreign woman, since while the number of active men has fallen by 24,300 people, that of women has risen by 117,000. By nationality, there are 85,400 new foreign assets compared to 7,300 Spaniards.
This group may include people who did not need to work before and now, due to inflation and the loss of purchasing power, are forced to look for a job to increase their household income; foreigners who are in the country looking for a job -for example, Ukrainian refugees-; or even workers with a fixed discontinuous contract who were in a period of inactivity, waiting to be called again, and in the absence of that call they have decided to start looking for a new job, with which they go from being inactive to being unemployed.
In the first quarter, 718,800 people who in the last quarter of 2022 were considered inactive -because they were not looking for a job- have become active and, specifically, unemployed, since they are looking for a job; while 429,100 inactive have gone directly to the labor market by finding a position or, in discontinuous permanent cases, having been called back by the company with which they signed the contract.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
