The month of April, which marked the end of almost all the restrictions due to Covid-19 and the massive movements of tourists to the coast at Easter, has confirmed that the labour market is on a positive path. Not only are there more jobs in Spain, but they are also more stable, as a result of the labour market reform approved at the end of last year.
According to the latest unemployment figures registered by the State Public Employment Service (SEPE), in April the number of unemployed people fell by 86,260, which is 2.7% less than a month earlier. The total number of people registered in the SEPE offices as job seekers stood at 3.02 million.
In a year-on-year comparison, unemployment has decreased in Spain by 888,125 people (-22.71%) since April 2021, when Covid-19 was still hitting the Spanish economy hard and citizens were immersed in the mass vaccination process.
Another fundamental change in the Spanish labour market has to do with the quality of the jobs created. Now, nearly one of every two contracts that are signed (48.2% in April) are of indefinite duration, the result of the labour market reform approved by the government headed by Pedro Sanchez (Socialist) in December 2021. Before, only one in ten contracts were permanent.
In total, 1,450,093 employment contracts were signed in April, of which 698,646 are permanent. By activity sectors, 50% of the contracts signed in the agriculture and in the services sector are permanent contracts. In the construction sector, the percentage is 74%.
Among those under 25 years of age, 44% of the contracts signed in April were also of an indefinite nature.
Labour market reform
In December 2021, prior to the labour market reform, permanent contracts accounted for 10% of the total. The percentage rose to 15% in January, to 22% in February, to 31% in March and to 48% in April.
Buenos datos de empleo publicados hoy. La afiliación a la Seguridad Social crece en 33.000 personas en abril y terminamos el primer cuatrimestre de 2022 con 153.000 afiliados más. Además, se acentúan los efectos positivos de la reforma laboral en la calidad del empleo (ABRO HILO) pic.twitter.com/nMeRt37Bhp
— José Luis Escrivá (@joseluisescriva) May 4, 2022
In terms of affiliation to the Spanish Social Security, there are 184,577 more contributors and the total number of people employed in Spain is 20,019,080, exceeding 20 million for the first time.
The Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Diaz of Unidas Podemos, the smaller coalition partner to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists, described these data as "spectacular." She said that thanks to the labour reform now "one of every two contracts is indefinite."
"It is no small thing to change the paradigm of a country's labour market," Diaz celebrated.
