The rise in Social Security affiliation in March, of 206,410 new contributors, is an improvement that is part of what has been the usual trend for this period, marked by the effect of Easter and the proximity of the summer campaign . The average affiliation stood at 20,376,552 affiliates, with a year-on-year increase in employment of 2.73%.
While salaried employment grew in all sectors, in March the self-employed fell for the third consecutive month (-0.04%). There were interannual decreases of 3,041 self-employed (-1.5%) in manufacturing, 2,600 (-0.8%) in hospitality, and 19,900 (-2.6%) in commerce, a sector that exhibits a worse profile than the same month of the previous year.
The global behavior of employment by sectors and territories confirms the effect of Holy Week. The hospitality industry leads job creation, with almost 74,000 new affiliations two years after the start of the pandemic restrictions, followed by construction, with close to 17,000. Some upturns that are welcome just when SMEs have to undertake returns of the financial relief of 130,000 million euros in the form of loans guaranteed by the ICO that they received during the health crisis.
As for the autonomous communities with the highest job creation, Andalusia stands out, followed by Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Community of Madrid and the Valencian Community.
Although the employment data for the month of March are positive, CEPYME draws attention to the seasonal component underlying these records and recalls that the situation of companies, especially smaller ones, is not good, since they are enduring a strong cost increases that reduce their margins and condition their viability.
For this reason, the Confederation demands greater concern for the self-employed and small businesses, as well as more favorable measures that encourage their growth, instead of policies that penalize business activity and increase the costs associated with job creation.
Unemployment fell in the month of March by 48,755 people (-1.67%), placing the total number of registered unemployed at 2,862,260 people. If all non-employed jobseekers are added to the registered unemployed, the unemployed total 3,388,018 people, and the real decrease materializes in 35,222 unemployed.
CEPYME recalls that since the full implementation of the last labor reform there has been a significant increase in the hiring of discontinuous permanent workers (+70.67), whose inactivity situation is not counted for the purposes of registered unemployment, which makes it difficult to have a reliable view of the behavior of the labor market. In this sense, the Confederation calls for clearer and more complete statistical information on this matter.