The labor reform cushions the oscillations of unemployment in the weakest October in employment since 2017

• The number of employees grows by 3.4% since 2019 but the hours worked only increase by 0.8%

The number of workers in Spain increased in October by 103,499 people,

which is the

membership since October

, five years ago, according to data published this Thursday by the Ministry of Social Security.

Job creation is losing steam, although the labor market continues to resist without job losses despite the economic slowdown, which is already translating into minimal growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Although affiliation is the most accurate data to know the health of the labor market -because it reflects who is actually working, with the exception of ERTE workers who continue to count as affiliates-, the Ministry of Labor also published yesterday

in the offices of the State Public Employment Service (

, the former Inem), according to which

This is the

in the entire historical series and has allowed the total number of

in the country to stand at

,

.

Keep in mind, however, that this figure reflects the number of people who have signed up for the SEPE lists and does not include those who, having lost their jobs, have not yet signed up for those lists.

In addition, after the entry into force of the

in January and its full deployment since April, workers who are hired under the

when they are in the inactivity phase, despite the fact that they are They are receiving unemployment benefit.

This means that in activities that are seasonal by nature, such as the

, workers

, although they are no longer affiliated with Social Security.

In fact, in October, a total of

, in line with the loss of jobs in that sector in years prior to the pandemic, while

and gave up.

go down to Social Security.

In total,

Despite the fact that they stopped working and being affiliated, those who continue with a fixed-discontinuous contractual relationship with their employer will not be counted as unemployed.

The same thing happened in

, a sector in which

despite the fact that

in October, predictably due to the effect of the permanent-discontinuous jobs, and that

Activity is still temporary

Joaquín Pérez-Rey,

Secretary of State for Employment, explained that "two important logics are starting to work in the labor market: a

which we began to notice in June and July, and the

that guarantee stability in agriculture, in a part of the services sector, etc. These sectors based the use of labor on the rotation of temporary contracts, now they do it with temporary and indefinite contracts and that corrects the consequences of seasonality in registered unemployment".

It refers to the fact that, on the one hand, companies no longer need to hire massively when they used to do it and fire later, since they can have fixed-discontinuous contracts activated - considered indefinite in statistics - by those who resort to workers when they need it, without these going through the unemployment lists.

However,

can be seen in the

data , and not only in job losses in some sectors, but also in the daily fluctuation.

On

(Monday the 3rd)

-because 462,291 workers were discharged and 285,065 discharged, in which those discharged during the weekend are computed-, while

-only 134,603 entered the system and yet 301,539 were fired-.

This dynamic is also reflected in the greater number of hirings that take place every

of the month and the increase in dismissals on

, and the Ministry of Social Security itself does not know how to explain why the change in the seasonality of the demand for workers does not translate into greater stability throughout the month.

"It is a good question and

, trying to find an explanation. There is a factor that seems to weigh more than we had initially estimated, which is a certain tendency for incorporations to occur more at the beginning of the month, the first day, or at the beginning of the week, on Mondays, and that

, on Fridays. This seems to

but it is something that we are investigating and we are trying to find those reasons. It is appreciated that this oscillation that occurs in the week and the month is somewhat more tenuous now than it was before, but in any case it is true that we think that

.

Probably we have to wait a little longer and let a whole year of the labor reform be completed," said

, Secretary of State for Social Security.

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• Social Security

• GDP

• SEPE

• Unemployment

• Employment

• ERTE