Escrivá expects October to close with 102,000 more jobs

Despite the difficult economic situation, with the war in Ukraine in the background, the energy crisis and high inflation rates, the labor market continues to grow in Spain.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
19 October 2022 Wednesday 08:40
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Escrivá expects October to close with 102,000 more jobs

Despite the difficult economic situation, with the war in Ukraine in the background, the energy crisis and high inflation rates, the labor market continues to grow in Spain. This was confirmed this Wednesday by the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, who estimates that October will close with 102,000 more Social Security affiliates, a figure lower than the job creation that occurred in the period prior to the pandemic. 2017-2019. In seasonally adjusted terms, that is, without taking into account the calendar or the season, there will be 15,000 new contributors.

This figure, the minister has acknowledged, is "a little below" the 30,000 or 35,000 jobs that are being created each month in seasonally adjusted values, for which he admits that the data is not "spectacular", although it is "positive". In this sense, he considers that the evolution of the labor market demonstrates its "extraordinary resilience" in "an uncertain environment" such as the current one.

The minister attributes the worse performance of employment in October in seasonally adjusted terms to the lower increase in hiring in the education sector compared to September, shifting to that month part of the hiring that usually occurs in October. For this reason, it has ruled out that "a slowdown in the rate of job creation" is taking place and has insisted that "no cooling" of employment has been detected, which is growing at rates close to 2% or 2.5% since that the market began to rebound after the peak periods of the pandemic. However, he does not rule out that at some point it will "weaken" as a result of the current economic uncertainty.

On the other hand, Escrivá has highlighted that Social Security has gained more than 750,000 contributors since August 2021, 400,000 of them so far this year, of which the majority, around 90%, are located in the private sector. Another noteworthy aspect is the quality of the employment that is created. 84% of contracts are now indefinite, fourteen points more than before the labor reform, which has placed the percentage of temporary workers at a historical low of 16%.

Another positive impact of the reform, according to Escrivá, is the longer duration of the contracts. Specifically, he has pointed out that the average duration of the contracts has increased by 20% compared to 2019, 40 days more in absolute terms. "These are data that show the dynamism of the labor market," he pointed out, while adding that social security contributions will rise by 8.5%.

Except in the case of education, the minister highlighted the strength of the trade sector and the good pace of job creation in technology and high value-added sectors. Specifically, IT and telecommunications activities and professional, scientific and technical activities lead the increase in affiliates in relative terms compared to the figures prior to the pandemic, with growth of 18.5% and 9.9%, respectively.