The Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, announced yesterday that the Government will allocate an investment of 11,296 million euros to promote structural reforms in terms of employment in the next seven years, of which her ministry will allocate 3,500 million to promote and improve youth employment whose unemployment rate still exceeds 31%, despite the fact that the level of employment among the group has once again touched three million, for the first time in 11 years.
The decision has been taken once the European Commission has given the green light for the allocation to Spain of the amount corresponding to the European Social Fund Plus for the period between 2022 and 20027.
“Spain has fought for youth employment to be one of the keys to the European Social Fund and has achieved that a minimum of 12% of its funds be allocated to improving youth employment. But in this country, with the dimension of this problem, we have managed to allocate 22% of the total amount of the Spanish allocation. It is money that is going to be invested yes or yes until 2027 regardless of who is in charge of the Government, ”explained Minister Yolanda Díaz yesterday during an appearance with the press to take stock of the first year of the Labor reform.
“In one year we have changed the paradigm of the labor market. After 52 labor reforms that did not serve to give more protection to workers, we now have a text that, I dare say, is an international reference. It is not true that you have to choose between unemployment and precariousness”, assured Díaz after making a triumphant review of the achievements of the labor market in the last year.
The most outstanding without a doubt for the Minister of Labor is the evolution of the rate of temporary employment in the private sector. One of the historical ballasts of the Spanish labor market and one of the black spots pointed out by the European authorities. “They asked us to change it and in one year we have achieved that one in two contracts in Spain are permanent. It is one of the great advances of the labor reform: the temporary employment rate has dropped 7 points and is at its lowest point in all history: 17.5%” assured the vice president.
Although the fact that she says she is most proud of is that of the 9.43 million women with a job. "Never in our country have there been so many women working." In total, 20.5 million people work in Spain, the highest figure since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, 14 years ago.
Díaz also vehemently defended himself yesterday against the criticism that the discontinuous landline data may be masking the figures. The minister recalled that the criteria applied in Spain is the same as that used by Eurostat and that it is the autonomous communities that send the data to Sepe. "Doing Trumpism and questioning public institutions and statistics is very dangerous," she warned. Regarding the negotiations to raise the minimum wage, I limited myself to pointing out that "they are left for January."
