Alejandra Olcese
Updated Friday, February 2, 2024-09:00
Alert Productivity per hour worked enters negative territory for the first time since the pandemic
2023 Employment grew by 783,000 workers in 2023 to 21.24 million and unemployment fell to 11.7%
The number of
employees
registered with Social Security
fell by 231,250 people in January
, a loss that is similar to that registered in this same month in previous years and which is mainly due to the loss of personnel in the
hospitality
and
commerce sector
. the end of the Christmas holiday season.
According to data published this Friday by the Ministry of Social Security, this is the
most pronounced loss of affiliates since 2020
, when 244,044 jobs were destroyed in January, but it is not far from that registered last year (-215,047) or the which there were on average from 2013 to 2019 (about 201,000).
The greatest job losses have occurred in the
hospitality industry and commerce
, which have respectively lost some 50,000 workers: in the former, 46,594 employees and 2,695 self-employed workers have been lost; and in the second, 47,130 employees and 5,228 businesses. The latter is the sector that has suffered the most in the last year and at the end of January it had
12,216 fewer self-employed workers
than a year ago, which results in a
loss of 33 businesses per day in 2023.
In the General Regime there has also been a drop in January 42,552 people in administrative activities and auxiliary services.
In general terms, the loss of affiliates occurred in all regimes: the month ended with 195,197 fewer employees, a drop of 16,316 farm workers, the loss of 1,430 household employees and 16,949 fewer self-employed workers. By sector,
services
accumulated the most significant loss (-192,060), followed by
agriculture
and livestock (-19,056),
industry
(-11,514) and
construction
(-8,621).
With this evolution in the number of affiliates - which offers a real-time snapshot of employment in Spain -, unemployment
registered
in the offices of the State Public Employment Service (Sepe) only
increased by 60,404 people
, since permanent workers are not counted. discontinued workers who have stopped working during the month, up to a total of
2,767,860 unemployed.
By economic sectors compared to December, registered unemployment only decreased in construction (-1,234 people, -0.58%), but increased in industry (+440, +0.20%), agriculture (+1,256, +1.28%) and, above all, services (+58,721, +3.03%). The group without previous employment increased by 1,221 people in a context of growth in the active population.
Good seasonally adjusted behavior
The Ministry of Social Security headed by
Elma Saiz
has inherited from the time of José Luis Escrivá a
seasonally adjusted
metric to know how the labor market has functioned each month if the behavior typical of the time in which we find ourselves is ignored, that is, if the seasonal aspect is eliminated.
This January, in seasonally adjusted terms, employment
would have grown by 38,357 people
, according to this model, and the number of affiliates would have exceeded 20.8 million.
The sectors that are pulling more than usual this month are
specialized construction activities
(with a seasonally adjusted rebound of 12,400 affiliates), education (+9,369), building construction (+7,707) and healthcare activities (+6,739 ).
As for
unemployment
, in seasonally adjusted terms, it fell by 27,691 people, according to the seasonality coefficients available in the Economic Situation Series Database (BDSICE) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.