Alejandra Olcese

Daniel Viana

Updated Friday, March 22, 2024-02:17

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Membership in Spain has not only recovered since the

pandemic

but has grown strongly from that point on and is approaching 21 million workers. Total employment in the country has increased by 9.6% between February 2019 and February 2024. In that period,

public employment

has grown much more strongly than private employment:

18.7

%, compared to

8.2% %.

This means that of the 20.7 million people who worked in Spain on average in February of this year,

17.7 million

are employees of the private sector - between salaried and self-employed - and

2.96 million

are affiliated with the Social Security of the public sector. To the latter we should add those Administration workers who are not registered with Social Security but in the Muface, Mugeju and Isfas mutual societies.

"The ratio of public employees in relation to the number of employees in the private sector has dropped sharply under the Government of Pedro Sánchez. We have gone from 7 private employees for each public employee to a ratio of 6 to 1. Public contracting increases unstoppably during the last decade and, more especially, in the last five years. Before, during and after the pandemic,

the Administrations' workforce does not stop growing

. In addition, since 2019 we find that the increase in public employment is faster than that of private employment", the

Juan de Mariana Institute

collects in the study

The shadows of the Spanish labor market

published today.

This evolution is "

worrying

", considers

Manuel Llamas

, director of the Institute, as he tells EL MUNDO. "If the labor market grew with an unusual force and the private sector did so above the public, or both grew equally, it would not be worrying. The problem is that if you add to this the statistical make-up with discontinuous permanent contracts, it represents a factor additional distortion in the labor market. If a good part of the employment growth is explained by the public, we are cheating ourselves, it denotes a

less healthy dynamism

in the labor market," he points out.

Public employment has grown by 467,791 Social Security affiliates since February 2019, of which

336,909 (72%) are regional employees

, 102,513 are state officials and 28,368 are assigned to local corporations - city councils, councils, councils, etc. .-.

Education is the sector that

has

received the greatest reinforcement in this period, with 245,704 new employees; followed by

health activities

, which have increased their workforce by 108,629 people, and

Public Administration, defense and Social Security

, whose workforce has grown by 60,183 employees.

The following activities that have incorporated the most public employment are

Research and Development (R&D),

a fundamental area to guarantee the increase in productivity in the country and perhaps linked to the deployment of European funds, with an increase of 12,217 people; and

architectural and engineering

technical services , technical testing and analysis, with 9,621 new workers.

These increases cover both the replacement of workers who are

retiring

in the Public Administration - in sub-administrations such as Social Security the workforce is so old that retirements occur weekly - and a net increase in the workforce. In fact, 1.12 million people work in Public Administration, Defense and Social Security today compared to 1.06 in 2019; In Health there are 768,844 professionals, compared to 660,214 in 2019; and

in Education the workforce has almost doubled

despite the drop in the birth rate, with 617,520 workers compared to 371,815 in 2019.

This last segment is influenced by the fact that in the last year the Government has

reclassified

many workers that it had counted as employees of the Administration and who were actually in the educational sector. This transfer has increased the number of affiliates in Education above what was expected.

The only activities in which there has been a

drop in public membership

are agriculture, livestock, hunting and related services (-1,326 workers since February 2019), construction of buildings (-930), extraction of anthracite, coal and lignite. (-551) and repair and installation of machinery and equipment (-444).