• First semester The improvement in employment does not prevent collective layoffs: they shoot up 35% until June

A total of 4,778 workers lost their jobs in July due to a collective dismissal, 78% more than in the same period of the previous year and the highest figure for this month since 2013, in the midst of the economic crisis, when 7,048 employees went to the streets for this reason.

This is reflected in the Employment Regulation Statistics published by the Ministry of Labor this week, according to which 22,854 people have lost their jobs so far this year due to a collective dismissal, compared to 16,000 who happened the same in the same period last year.

Transport and storage have been the areas of activity in which there has been more job destruction (1,699 in July), possibly due to its link with industry, the sector that has suffered the most in the last quarter and where the fall in international orders has been most noticed; followed by financial and insurance activities (with 736 casualties), trade and repair of motor vehicles (597) and professional, scientific and technical activities (with 397).

The Community of Madrid is the region in which there were more layoffs (1,662), followed by Catalonia (1,043), Andalusia (729) and the Valencian Community (559).

Almost half of the employees who were affected by this type of restructuring work in large companies, with more than a thousand workers; 37% are part of companies with between 250 and a thousand employees; 291 were from medium-sized companies - between 50 and 250 workers - and 849 belong to companies with fewer than 50 employees.

As for the reasons why the company resorted to a collective dismissal, in half of the cases it was because it was suffering losses at the time of the dismissal, while the next most common cause was the dynamics of production itself: in the face of falling orders, fewer staff are needed.

Along with the 4,778 workers who were victims of an ERE, there were also in July 7,271 who had their contracts temporarily suspended and who were sent to unemployment within the framework of an ERTE (32.2% more than in the same month of the previous year) and 566 who had their working hours reduced.

In total, 12,615 employees underwent restructuring, of which half (6,603) belong to the industrial sector - and, in particular, to the manufacturing industry - where the number of affected has grown by 1,745 people. Services are the second sector with the most impact (5,706 workers, 1,516 more than in July 2022), while in construction there have only been 215 employees affected and in the field, 94.

Valencia leads the restructuring

If all types of restructuring are taken into account, the Valencian Community is the one with the most affected workers (3,256 in July), among other things due to the impact that the fall in activity at the Ford plant in Almussafes (Valencia) or the crisis in the ceramic and tile industry in Castellón has had on the region; followed by the Community of Madrid (1,985) and Catalonia (1,672). The Basque Country is the fourth, with 1,340 workers, due to the high weight of industry in the regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The increase in layoffs in July contributed to the average Social Security affiliation only growing by 21,945 people – compared to the average increase of about 50,000 people that occurred in that same month in the five years prior to the pandemic. In August, 185,385 jobs were lost in the country, as usual, with education, construction and industry being the blackest sectors; while in the first fifteen days of September 59,000 jobs were lost.

This month is usually positive for the labor market; in fact, since 2013 there has been no September in which jobs have been lost, not even in 2020, but the behavior of the first fortnight and the slowdown in activity advanced by the PMI indices sow doubt about the behavior of employment, which will be known next Tuesday.

"The further reductions in activity were accompanied by a further slowdown in employment growth, as the rate of job creation in services was the weakest since last January," the latest PMIs warned, while in industry "employment levels increased for the first time in three months, although only slightly."

  • Valence
  • ERTE
  • Employment