July was coming and bars, hotels, restaurants and adventure companies were hunting for the summer employee. The headlines of the media gave good news with the creation of employment and the economic forecasts were of the dynamism that money jumps between the pocket and the box. It doesn’t seem like that anymore. The unemployment data for the last month have made people go from euphoria to fear of recession. The last month, in which the Asturian labor market has resisted, but worsened in year-on-year terms, has been bad news for employment. For the first time in the entire historical series – which begins in 2001 – employment has been destroyed when the sun and beach season begins in Spain. That, which seems an anomaly, has an explanation in these circumstances: the hiring has been advanced, the dismissals of temporary education workers have been averted and, on the economic fabric, the fear of the ever-rising CPI data hovers. and an autumn that, for many, smells like a recession.
From the best data of the statistics of June -strongly celebrated by the Ministries of Labor and Social Security-, Spain has gone on to register the worst data of July. In recent weeks, the cooling of the labor market has accelerated and the hitherto strength against inflation has suffered the first impacts. Spain has lost 7,365 Social Security affiliates, a modest setback if it weren’t for the fact that the number of employed people had never dropped before in July. This remains above a total of 20.3 million active workers, very close to the historical maximum recently reached, but leaving the first sign of a change in cycle and with an autumn of job destruction.
A total of 115,528 teachers, dining room guards, monitors and others have put educational centers on the streets this July, concentrating the bulk of job destruction there. In agriculture and construction, employment has also been lost, although substantially less, and the Government attributes this to the high temperatures of recent weeks.
If employment usually rises in July, unemployment usually falls, and this month neither one nor the other. Unemployment rose little, by 3,230 people, but it rose for the first time in July since 2008. The testimonial rise allowed the labor market to remain below three million unemployed, specifically it closed the month at 2.8 million people who They search but can’t find work. The highest rate in the entire European Union, despite having been reduced in the last two years by almost one million people. The rise in unemployment was not distributed equally among men and women, with a token drop of 0.1% among the former and a rise of 0.3% among the latter.
More unemployment among wage earners and fewer self-employed workers. Social Security lost 10,422 self-employed workers, the largest decline since 2009, and the first setback in five months. RETA affiliates had shown great resilience since the beginning of covid, reinforced by the public aid enabled by the Government and which for the first time arrived in a generalized way among the group. The month closed with a total of 3.3 million self-employed, at the expense of how it evolves in the coming months and how it receives the new contribution system, which will come into force from 2023.
Despite the fact that the CPI crisis was noted in the data for this July, it did not translate into an increase in workers affected by ERTE. A group that for months now represents a residual percentage within the labor market. In July, 21,135 employees were in ERTE, partially or totally, about 500 less than a month before.