2023-09-04 19:49:22
The data from employment referring to the month of August they are usually bad. Traditionally, the end of the summer season caused activities linked to tourism, from beach bars to rural hotels or airport shops, to suffer the end of the holidays and, once ‘August was done’, reduce their staff to adapt to the last months of the year.
This 2023 has not been an exception and the data published by the Government this Monday reflect a loss of more than 180,000 active workers throughout the entire country. However, and contrary to what may seem intuitive, the hostelry He’s not behind that hole in the Social Security accounts.
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The statistics for this month of August leave bittersweet feelings, since the data in absolute terms are bad, but they are less bad than usual before the outbreak of the covid. It has not been a dramatic month, compared to other years, and the trend confirms the slowdown, but does not make it worse.
However, these lights are not incompatible with various shadows, some located on a not too distant horizon and others already known, such as the rates of paro higher than the European Union, among others. Here the five keys of a month of the month of August.
Employment: Back to school takes its toll
“The increase in unemployment shows that not only with a labor reform can the seasonality of the economic cycles of a country be changed”, stressed the general secretary of Pimec, Joseph Ginesta, based on the August data. And it is that while the new regulations have had a clear impact in some sectors, temporality and the dynamics of ‘use and throw away’ continue to be installed in some redoubts -not always minority or small- of the labor market.
The hospitality industry, a sector that once terminated its workforce en masse as August 31 approached, has barely contributed to the drop in membership this past month. Specifically, 1,333 affiliates have been lost, in a sector that employs 1.6 million people and that has internalized -with its pluses and minuses- the figure of discontinuous fixed.
Where does the bite come from? The answer lies in education: one in three cut jobs are concentrated in this sector, especially in country houses, esplais and other leisure centers where parents take their children while there is no school.
Employment will continue to grow, but less
In a month where the seasonal component has such a strong weight in the statistics, the seasonally adjusted data They help to see the trend and ‘where we are going’. Here the Government goes through the ‘kitchen’ the figures and try to isolate that seasonal component, to measure if beyond the situation the inertia is positive or negative. And, according to this method, employment grew by 17.745 personas in August.
It is a positive figure, yes, but it confirms the cooling dynamics that the data from previous months allowed us to glimpse. And it is that after two and a half years of strong growth and a particularly explosive spring in terms of job creation, now the rate is going down. To put it in perspective, the average of seasonally adjusted monthly increases is during this 2023 of 60,262 membersa figure 3.4 times higher than that registered in August.
It remains to be seen how the labor market will evolve in the last quarter of the year, traditionally the toughest and during which companies are less likely to hire.
Unemployment: picks up again, although less
The August data tag could be a “but less”. Employment has fallen, yes, but less than other Augusts. And unemployment, for its part, has risen again, but less than in other years. Specifically in 24.826 personasuntil surpassing again (and by very little) the symbolic height of the 2.7 million of unemployed. The Government has emphasized in its statements that this is the smallest increase in a month of August since 2016.
Unemployment remains for another month -as the meme says: ‘it doesn’t matter when you read this’- as the eternal pending issue of the Spanish labor market. Spain continues to have the highest unemployment rate in the EU, although the coverage rate has improved in recent years. In other words, there are currently more unemployed who receive benefits and thus have a minimum income at the end of the month. Specifically, seven out of 10 registered unemployed receive some benefit or subsidy from Sepe.
Bad month for the self-employed
2023 is not being a good year for employment autonomous. After weathering the pandemic with extraordinary resistance and entering the current price crisis without major losses, the self-employed group is currently navigating waters with little current, practically stagnant. Since last December, in Spain, the self-employed have practically neither gained nor lost, since almost the same number of those who leave are registered. In August, a negative balance was registered for the second consecutive month, specifically 10,945 self-employed persons, which leaves the total number of 3.3 million members to RETA discharged.
Summer is especially noticeable in terms of registrations and cancellations and it is that practically all activities lose self-employed workers. The common denominator with wage earners is that education has concentrated the greatest bleeding. The group is adapting to the price crisis and, at the same time, to the new quota system, which now taxes the self-employed based on their net income. It will be necessary to see during the second half of the year how the group reacts and if some of the workers, unable to hold on to the minimum quota, prefer to unsubscribe if they are badly given.
Catalonia leads the destruction of employment and Madrid continues to slack off
The loss of employed was transversal both territorially and sectorally. The end of the tourist season took a special toll on areas such as Catalonia, that to the sinkhole in education add a greater presence of tourist season. In absolute terms, the Catalan provinces led job destruction, with 60,317 fewer employed, up to a total of 3.6 million contributors.
The bite of August was noted with special relevance in Levante and in Madrid, which despite not having this seasonal factor so present, left 36,860 contributors, out of a total of 3.5 million employed people. The state capital continues in its regressive cycle this 2023. To the point that so far this year, it has registered a negative balance of 6,365 employed, compared to the positive balance of 104,595 new employees in Catalonia.
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