April leaves 184,577 more contributors to the Social Security system in Spain and 86,260 fewer unemployed. This usually corresponds to a traditionally positive month for employment when it coincides with the Easter holiday period, with its good impact on jobs.
The average number of affiliated members in April exceeded 20 million (20,019,080 people) and the number of unemployed fell to three million (3,022,503 unemployed). That said, we continue to lead the European Union in terms of unemployment levels (13.65% compared to the EU average of 6.2%). Meanwhile a large part of the improvement is due, as the leader of the opposition, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, pointed out, to the fact that “we have 215,000 more public jobs, which is why our unemployment figures appear to be tidier”.
April’s figures place us at higher employment levels than those reached before the pandemic. The positive evolution reaches all territories and sectors, with special emphasis on those that had been most affected by the pandemic, such as hotels and catering. This has grown by 315,216 members compared to the same time last year, along with others with high added value, such as health -60,686 more members in year-on-year terms-, scientific and technical activities -58,334 more-, education -54,901 more- or information and communication -54,142 more employed-.
The self-employed also increased by 9,100 with respect to the end of April 2021, with scientific and technical professional activities standing out, with an increase in the last twelve months of 11,355 persons. However, this is the worst growth figure since 2012, with the exception of 2020, where the impact of the pandemic was clearly visible.
Together with the above, the most relevant figure is found in permanent contracts, with 698,646 permanent contracts signed in April, which represents 48.18% of the total number of contracts signed, the highest in the historical series in any month and almost 326% more than in the same month of 2021. This is a good indication of the effects of the labour reform in the attempt to move towards greater employment stability.
As a counterpoint, it is worth highlighting the precariousness of the public sector, where the EPA data for the first quarter of the year show a temporary employment rate of 32.5%, which rises to 38.5% in the case of women. This compares with the private sector, where the temporary employment rate is 22.1% – 21.4% for men and 22.9% for women.
