The self-employed deposit for the Asturian economy to carbure is at a minimum. If the self-employed group had a witness in the form of a pump, the red light would be on and blinking to demand attention. According to Social Security affiliation data, Asturias had 70,878 self-employed workers at the end of January, after losing 1,174 in one year. In addition, this total number of registrations is the lowest since 2007, just before the self-employed workers of the special agricultural regime were integrated into the self-employed and fattened the numbers. That is why, from CEAT Asturias, the self-employed association of the Asturian Federation of Entrepreneurs (FADE), it is highlighted that the affiliation of last January is “the historical minimum in Asturias”.
To find an annual drop of more than 1,100 self-employed workers in a month of January, we must go back to 2013, in the aftermath of the last great financial crisis and when Asturias registered the worst employment figures of this century. There the first major extinction of self-employed workers in Asturias took place. Now the region suffers the second.
Conjunction of factors.
Extraordinary benefits for temporary cessation of activity, regional aid and lines of credit helped the self-employed in Asturias to survive during the coronavirus pandemic, when activity was restricted. “Now there is no aid and the problems have been accumulating. The price of fuels skyrocketed and energy went through the roof. For the same demand, the expenses are much higher,” explains Patricia Oreña, who has presided for almost the Association of Self-Employed Workers (ATA) in Asturias for a decade. “This situation has been getting worse over the past year and now in 2023, when many self-employed workers were on the edge, a new contribution system is coming, which for many means paying more,” adds Oreña, who assures that “many are throwing in the towel because every time It is more difficult to have an open business: the returns are lower, the bureaucracy and regulations are increasing, and with the increases in the minimum interprofessional wage, hiring is more complicated”.
The most affected branches.
Oreña highlights that commerce, hospitality and the primary sector, “the backbone of the self-employed in Asturias”, are the branches most affected by extinction. The latest CEAT Asturias report puts numbers to that appreciation. Of the 1,174 self-employed workers lost between January 2022 and January 2023, 471 were from the commerce branch (3% of their total affiliation), 297 from the hospitality industry (3.3%) and 204 from agriculture, livestock and fishing (2.5%).
The weight of trade
Carmen Moreno, manager of the Union of Merchants of Asturias, points out that to gauge the drop in merchants in absolute numbers, the weight of this branch of activity within the self-employed group must be taken into account, since it represents more than 21% of the total, the most bulky. “I do not notice that there are fewer shops in the cities. Small municipalities are another thing. With the improvement of communications, merchants have a more complicated survival because now it is much easier to go shopping in the center of the region,” Moreno explains. , which adds that these councils “have a very aged population rate and the generational change in business is very complicated.” In addition, Carmen Moreno points out a factor that she has added pressure to leave the activity with the change of the year. “The 8.5% rise in pensions was an incentive to advance retirement among those self-employed who were already very close to reaching retirement age,” highlights the president of the Union of Merchants of Asturias.
Less hoteliers, but more professionals.
José Luis Álvarez Almeida, president of the Asturias hotel and tourism business association (OTEA), points out that in recent years there has been a “significant reduction” in the number of self-employed workers in the sector. “It is a decrease that is also taking place in other economic sectors, but in the hotel industry it has been more notable and has been accentuated in recent months,” says the president of OTEA. “This shows that the aid we received was not enough. It has been the sector that suffered the most from the covid restrictions, which was treated more harshly, and it is also a sector with small companies with very limited economic capacity. With the increase in prices, the end of the postponement of credits and the rise in prices, we already said that many closures were going to be generated and that’s how it has been,” he adds. However, Álvarez Almeida points out that, on the contrary, the number of workers hired in the hospitality industry, salaried employees, have increased. “This shows that the sector is becoming more professional, that the size of the companies is increasing. There are fewer, but bigger and stronger. Which I think is good for the sector,” says the president of OTEA, who highlights that hospitality and tourism contribute 11% of regional GDP and 12.8% of total employment. “If we check the employment figures for the hospitality sector since 2009, the date from which data from the Ministry are offered, we see how there has been a slow but constant decrease in the number of self-employed workers, which have dropped by 11%, compared to a gradual increase in wage earners, with a growth of 23%”, he highlights.
No relief in the field.
The problems of lack of generational relief in rural commerce are more intense in the case of agriculture, livestock and fishing. “In the primary sector the number of self-employed retirements is high and in many cases there is no relief”, highlights Patricia Oreña, president of ATA, who affirms that the aging of the population is an added factor of destruction of self-employment in Asturias “The children do not take over and business transfers continue to be expensive and complicated,” added Oreña.
The low entrepreneurial vocation
. Added to the aging of the population is a decline in entrepreneurship in Asturias. The latest report from the Entrepreneurship Observatory of the GEM Network (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) Spain indicates that the Entrepreneurial Activity Rate (TEA) in Asturias in the 2021-2022 period fell slightly compared to 2020-2021, while in Spain it rose more of 5%. “The one in Asturias was an unexpected result because a recovery was expected after the pandemic,” says Manuel González Díaz, professor of Business Administration at the University of Oviedo and director of the Caja Rural de Asturias Entrepreneurship Chair, which prepares the report. GEM Spain. “If entrepreneurial activity falls, the self-employed should also fall, assuming that it is the main legal form that supports entrepreneurship,” highlights the director of the chair, who adds that the dropout rate – percentage of the adult population that has closed or transferred their business in the last 12 months – has tripled in Asturias compared to the previous period, although in absolute value this rate is low in the region and less than in Spain. Manuel González affirms that there is an indicator that is contrary to the evolution of the number of self-employed. “Potential entrepreneurship, the percentage of the population with an interest in starting a business in the next 3 years, increased in Asturias to 6.4%, a rate that is less than 9% in Spain, but which is definitely an increase. This It would indicate that the desire to become an entrepreneur is increasing, be it as a self-employed person or with some other legal form, and this should translate into more self-employed workers”, highlights the professor for the coming years.
The transition between self-employment and job salaried.
Manuel González makes an effort to make a positive reading of the data from the GEM Spain report and tries to be optimistic, but admits that it does not help that Asturias is the region with the worst national entrepreneurial context index. “It is an index elaborated simply on the opinions of experts, but it suggests that they do not have a good impression of the entrepreneurial environment in Asturias, at least compared to what is happening in Spain and in Europe”, he points out. In addition, he adds a piece of information extracted from the report that gives clues about the extinction of the self-employed in Asturias. “In our report, 75% of entrepreneurs indicate that a reason to undertake is “to earn a living because work is scarce”, so if the employment data shows that there are more registered affiliates and fewer unemployed in Asturias in the In the last two years, it could happen that those who opened businesses out of necessity have found employment and have closed, usually because it is not very profitable,” says the professor at the University of Oviedo. In January 2023, the number of Social Security affiliates in the general regime in Asturias increased by 3,068 workers compared to the same month of the previous year and the number of unemployed decreased by 2,060, so the conditions have been met for that transfer from self-employment to salaried work. “Reversing the situation of lack of interest in entrepreneurship among the Asturian population is not easy. I also do not believe that there are magic solutions in the short term. We must continue with the policies of dissemination and promotion of entrepreneurship and wait to reap results”, recommends Manuel Gonzalez.