The discontinuous permanent contract has become one of the stars of the labor reform. It's not that it's a new formula. It has existed since 1985 but, with the new labor market regulations, which have abolished work and service contracts, the discontinuous fixed-term contract has become the most widely used instrument to establish indefinite-type contracts adapted to jobs with high temporality.
They are contracts that combine periods of work with others of inactivity, and this is precisely one of the data that needed to be specified: how many discontinuous permanent contracts are inactive. Because there is also a significant additional element, discontinuous permanent workers are not included in the list of registered unemployment.
Now, the Government has set the total number of discontinuous fixed lines without activity at 443,078 at the end of last year. They are inactive workers in December, of which 268,402 received unemployment benefit and 174,676 without benefit.
These are data that the Government has provided in a parliamentary response to two PP senators, which has been published by El Mundo and confirmed by La Vanguardia. The inactive discontinuous permanents throughout the year are detailed, and an evolution can be seen starting in January at 246,000 to progressively decrease until May, when they are reduced to 136,000, and then rise until reaching its maximum figure in December 2022, with the aforementioned 443,000. These are considerable variations caused by the seasonality of the use of this type of contract, whose activity or inactivity fluctuates extremely depending on the tourist season, the school year or the agricultural seasons.
From the Ministry of Work they affirm that they are raw data from the registry, "that do not reflect reality well", because which one is in the process of review. They refer to the fact that the figure of 443,000 includes other categories of job seekers that "distort the quality of the data." This is the case of the formerly unemployed in the TEAS (temporary subsidized agricultural workers) who now seem like discontinuous permanent workers.
Not incorporating the discontinuous fixed to registered unemployment is a methodology that was already used prior to the labor reform. What happens is that now this type of contract has become more important because its use has increased. For workers, the discontinuous permanent contract has advantages over a temporary contract of entry, which has guaranteed hiring in the future, to which is added greater protection in the event of dismissal and also adds all the seniority.
The figures known today are significant because until now only the number of discontinuous fixed lines that are working was known, but not the number of those that are inactive. In addition, the latter do not appear in the registered unemployment, which has provoked criticism from the opposition, especially from the PP, which considers that there is a "make-up of the unemployment figures." From the Ministry of Labor it is pointed out that the statistics have not been modified and that the inactive discontinuous fixed do not count as unemployed neither now nor when the PP governed:
