2023-10-16 07:59:31
All provinces except Girona experienced a decrease in enrollments in theautonomous in 2022. A decline that concentrated the sectors agricultural (-2,6%) i industrial (-2%), as the Catalan self-employed make up a group “highly tertiaryised and with little presence in the primary sector”.
Throughout the Catalan territory, the affiliations of self-employed people who contribute to the minimum base decreased by 26.9% in 2022, to 63.7% of the Special Regime of Self-Employed Workers (RETA), moving to higher bases, especially those that include contributions between 1 and 1.5 times the minimum base.
This was highlighted last Thursday by the executive secretary of the Economic and Social Council (CTESC), Carme García, at the presentation of the Council’s report “The situation of self-employment in Catalonia 2022”, together with the speaker of the study, Vanessa López and the Secretary of Labor of the Generalitat, Enric Vinaixa.
Thus, 2022 closed with a “generalized increase” in the contribution bases due to the approval of the new system which, although it entered into force on January 1, 2023, caused self-employed workers to act in forecast, according to García. He also assured that the regulatory changes benefit self-employed workers, who can now adapt their contribution to their economic reality: “There were many people who saw it with concern, but when people lose their fear of the new changes, that they always disturb, it’s positive”.
Between January and June 2023, the section following the minimum base has increased by 1,283%: “What is usual is no longer the minimum base, what is usual is the next stage”, said Vinaixa.
Economic cycles
With regard to self-employed workers, the number of this type of worker in Catalonia decreased by 1% compared to the previous year, and represented a total of 517,486 people.
They were 14.7% with respect to total work, also influenced by the increase in the salaried population, according to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA) collected by the CTESC.
García explained that “there are certainly people who became self-employed during Covid or later because they needed to work, and today they have found a job”. For his part, the director of the economic cabinet of the CTESC, Joan Santana, pointed out that self-employment in Catalonia is considered as “merely a subsidiary issue of what happens in economic cycles”. “When things are going well, people, if they can, go to salaried work, because it seems to them a safer resource.”
Profile
People aged 40 to 54 represented 48.6% of the group, while those older than 55 were 29.6%, and young people aged 16 to 39 were 21.8%. “When you start your working life, as a young person, I suppose you don’t want to complicate your life either”, reflected the director of the study, Vanessa López.
Women represented 36.1% of the total group, a percentage “slightly higher” than the Spanish average, and the gender gap decreased: they grew by 3.2% and self-employed men dropped by 3.3%
Pensions
García warned that the transfer to higher bases “so far has not produced changes to pensions”, although he highlighted the 5.5% increase in the average pension in 2022.
The average pension received by the self-employed was 787.9 euros, 37.4% less than those contributing to the general scheme, and the report notes a “stagnation in the downward trend” of the difference between all two
Finally, retirement pensions represented 69.5% of the total, they stood at 883.9 euros per month; and, with a difference of 38.9%, they are the ones that reflect a greater divergence.
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