Unemployment In Spain Falls To Lowest Figure Since 2007
Spain News
Published: 03 January 2023 09:53 CET
Updated: 31 January 2023 09:53 CET
Unemployment figures in Spain fell by 268,252 in 2022, leaving a total of 2,837,625 out of work. This is the lowest recorded number since 2007.
These numbers were shown in data that was released on Tuesday, January 2, by the Ministry of Labour and represent an 8.6 percent drop in the number of unemployed people in Spain.
In December alone, figures dropped by 43,727, representing a fall of 1.5 percent. This was the third month of decline in a row which took the number of unemployed below 3 million and showed that 2022 was a good year for employment in Spain.
In yearly terms, 2022 is the second year in succession that has seen a decline in unemployment figures and the best annual decline since 2017, after the record drop of 782,232 registered in 2021.
A total of 471,360 jobs were created in 2022, and there are now 20,296,271 Spaniards registered in the Social Security system.
These linked declines have led to a decrease in the registered unemployment in the SEPE offices at the end of 2022, bringing it to its lowest level in 15 years.
Taking to Twitter, Yolanda Diaz, the Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labour said "We once again demonstrate that economic crises can be faced by protecting employment, modernising the labour market, and combating precariousness and temporary employment."
The drop in numbers has been particularly noticeable amongst those aged below 25 years. Unemployment in that age group fell by 12 percent in 2022, leaving a record low of 195,751 who remain out of work.
In regards to gender, by the end of 2022, there were 133,884 fewer women who were unemployed, that’s a 7.3 percent drop compared to 2021. The best data in the last 14 years. 134,368 fewer men were unemployed, a drop of 10.5 percent compared to 2021.
Of the total 18,310,343 contracts that were signed in 2022, 7,027,160 (38.4 percent) were permanent, that’s almost five million more than in 2021 and 2019.
Temporary contracts have been reduced to 11,283,183, a depletion of nine million. Something Yolanda Díaz highlights as "one of the expected effects, in terms of stability, after the implementation of the Labor Reform", which has encouraged the hiring of permanent workers.
According to Social Security data, the current number of permanent workers is more than 2.3 million higher than that existing before the governing change.
Unions have celebrated Tuesday's data and have made a positive balance of the labor reform. In a statement to RNE, Unai Sordo, the general secretary of CCOO said "There is a very important qualitative leap, permanent contracts have multiplied by five and it is good news in the general calculation of the year."
Joaquín Pérez, the general secretary of the Union Sindical Obrera (USO) has however been more critical claiming "the discontinuous landline has been the star of the labor semi-reform. A way of calling someone who works for single weeks but who, for statistical purposes, is hired.” Something that is within this rise of permanent contracts, has been the increase in discontinuous permanent contacts, just one of the effects of the labor reform.
A total of 177,877 contracts, out of the 1,189,917 that were signed in December 2022 were discontinuous permanent contracts. A figure that is ten times higher than that of the same period in 2021.
In terms of regional distribution, all of the communities have seen an improvement in their unemployment data in 2022, unlike the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which closed the year with 4 and 753 more unemployed than in 2021.
The Balearic Islands, Madrid, and Extremadura have been the regions that registered the biggest falls of 35.9%, 18.5%, and 10.5%, with 20,123, 67,918, and 9,669 fewer people unemployed respectively.
The smallest annual decreases occurred in Navarra and La Rioja, with 416 and 742 fewer people respectively unemployed than in the previous year.
Sources
https://www.thelocal.es/20230103/spain-records-lowest-unemployment-level-since-2007/
https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/5089248/0/el-paro-baja-en-diciembre-en-268-252-y-cierra-2022-en-su-menor-nivel-desde-2007/
