2024-04-26 11:33:57
The data from the latest Active Population Survey (EPA) reflect a slowdown in employment, despite maximum employment. The EPA for the first quarter of the year reflects that employment has fallen by 139,700 people compared to the previous quarter. In this way, between January and March the worst evolution of the first quarter in 10 years has closed, ignoring 2020 due to the pandemic.
Although the first quarter is generally weak for employment, in the same period of 2023, employment decreased less, by 11,100 people. And this, despite the fact that this year the push for Holy Week took place in March. The drop in employment in the first quarter of this year has also been greater than in the same period of 2019, the first quarter of the pre-pandemic year, when employment fell by 93,400 people.
Furthermore, the evolution of employment in relation to activity points to new productivity losses, a worrying problem facing Spanish companies. All this, despite the positive record of 21,250,000 employed people.
The good overall employment data coexists with a high unemployment rate of 12.29%, which is also incongruent with the generalization of the problem of unfilled job vacancies. That is, companies suffer two negative impacts. Not only do they increase employment more than activity, sacrificing their productivity, but they find themselves with neglected job offers that undermine their projects. The intermediation work of the Public Employment Services is insufficient. The SEPE barely manages to intervene successfully in the marriage of job supply and demand in 2% of cases. For this reason, CEPYME considers it necessary to review active employment policies.
No sector is safe from the drop in employment in quarterly terms, compared to the same period of the previous year in which increases in employment in construction and services were recorded.
In the first quarter of the year, a slowdown in the pace of employment that CEPYME had been warning about has materialized, a situation that requires stabilizing measures that encourage investment and hiring decisions instead of hindering them: more legal certainty, less bureaucratic proliferation and Above all, a relief from the cumulative rise in labor costs and tax burdens suffered by the Spanish productive fabric, made up of 99% SMEs.
In year-on-year terms, the pace of job creation has moderated, although it is vigorous, which has a negative reading for the Spanish economy due to its chronic problem of low productivity. In interannual calculation, employment grows more than activity, deepening its decline.
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