The labor market lifts its foot off the brake and, after the bump in January, surprises again with good data in February, which has not been seen for eight years and which represents a change in the slowdown trend that had been regularly noted. more pronounced at the end of 2022 and the beginning of the new year.
After nine consecutive months of falls in the year-on-year rate of job creation, February recovers its momentum, albeit minimally, and adds almost 89,000 new affiliates, the biggest rise in the second month of the year since 2015 and well above the 69,000 more than They were registered a year ago, in full recovery from the pandemic, according to data published this Thursday by the Ministry of Social Security.
When the experts and organizations were already speaking widely of a sharp slowdown in the labor market, which had shown unusual resilience until the summer despite the war in Ukraine and the price crisis, the rate of job creation picked up one tenth up to 2.43%, although it is still half of that 5% rate that occurred in April, when it began to fall month by month until now. The system once again comfortably exceeds the barrier of 20.1 million affiliates and even exceeds 2.3 million for the first time in seasonally adjusted terms.
It is true that unemployment is rising, very slightly, with just 2,618 more people registered on the lists of employment agencies, but last year it fell by more than 11,000 people driven by the strong recovery after the pandemic. The total number of unemployed remains at 2.9 million.
In any case, it can be understood that this data is bad, since the hundreds of thousands of workers who have come to have a fixed discontinuous contract as a result of the labor reform and are without activity, which would significantly increase this figure, are not counted here. For this reason, from the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea) they warn that registered unemployment is no longer a good indicator to measure the situation until the Ministry of Labor finds the formula to account for those discontinuous fixed that are without activity. In fact, this ‘think tank’ estimates that since April effective unemployment has grown by close to 300,000 people and exceeds 3.5 million.
The tug of education
Four have been the sectors that have led job creation in February. In the first place, education, which adds 26,800 workers, closely followed by the hospitality industry, which has generated 25,000 jobs, and construction, which has also grown significantly, with 22,000 new contributors.
It is also worth noting the 12,000 new jobs that have been created in the manufacturing industry, as well as another 13,000 in the public administration. On the opposite side, almost 10,000 jobs have been destroyed in a sector as fundamental as health, 12,000 more in commerce after the end of the sales campaign and agriculture loses another 15,600 workers.
Temporality, at a minimum
On the recruitment side, February sets a new record as the temporary rate falls to a record low of 14%, less than half of the 30% recorded just over a year ago, before the entry into force of labor reform.
And to a greater extent, temporary employment has been cut among those under 30 years of age, whose rate has gone from 53% to 22%, according to the ministry led by José Luis Escrivá. Overall, there are now 2.5 million more affiliates with an indefinite contract than in December 2021, the last month before the reform came into force.
On the other hand, the number of workers in ERTE is at minimum levels, close to 13,000 employed.