Industrial employment falls to its historic low and has only created two out of every 100 new jobs since the pandemic

Alejandra Olcese

Updated Tuesday, April 9, 2024-02:58

• Data Industry contraction worsens

The weight of

industrial employment

over the total number of employed persons in the country has decreased in 2023 to

13.29%

,

a historical minimum, after

only 2.4% of the positions created

in our country have been created

since 2019.

in this sector: 29,800 new jobs of the 1.22 million positions created, according to the EPA.

The weight of industrial employment in Spain has been

in decline for years

: it reached 20.5% of the total at the end of the 90s - one in every five workers worked in this sector - but later dropped to 15.8% in in 2008 and, after the Great Recession, it has continued to reduce to 13.3% at the end of last year, with

2.79 million employees.

This leaves our country as the

eighth in the European Union

with the lowest proportion of employees working in the sector. Eurostat data shows that only in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, France and Denmark does the industry have a lower proportion of employees. On average, in the EU as a whole

the industry employs 15.4% of workers

; The Czech Republic being the state with the highest proportion, 27.5%.

Although in the Union as a whole, industrial employment has also been losing weight - it went from 19.9% ​​in 2000 to 15.4% in 2023 -, the

gap

between

Spain and the community average

has

tripled

in this period, with the years after the pandemic being key.

Not only has the proportion of workers employed in industry fallen, but the country has

27% fewer industrial companies

than in 2008, according to data compiled by recruitment consultancy

Robert Walters

. "The long-term trend is of

deterioration

and reduction in the number of companies. The majority of industrial companies are small companies spread throughout the national territory. There are only 6,000 industrial companies with more than 50 employees. However, they employ almost to 55% of professionals in the sector", stated in the

Industry and Family Business report,

shared with EL MUNDO.

This fall in industrial employment, in favor of services, has been parallel to a

loss in the sector's contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

. The National Accounting data from the INE show that the Gross Added Value of the industry - an indicator used to measure GDP - is

1.1% below the pre-pandemic level

at the end of 2023 and

6.7%

below the

2007

.

Although so far this century the industrial GDP has fluctuated in Spain in line with the European average, the

gap

has been

widening

little by little: from the distance of 1.9 points that existed in 2000 we have now moved to a of 3.8 percentage points. Furthermore, the year 2023 has been a turning point in this homogeneous evolution, since while the industrial GVA in the EU average has remained stable,

in Spain it has suffered a decline.

It is no coincidence that this loss of importance of the industry in employment and GDP occurs in a context in which

investment has not managed to recover

and is still below pre-covid levels. "In Spain, investment is still 3 points below the 2019 level, while in the rest of Europe it has continued to grow.

This is the most worrying thing about the Spanish economy right now

," highlighted this Monday

Carlos Ocaña

, general director of

Funcas

.

"The socioeconomic impact of the development and promotion of the industrial and family fabric is of great magnitude. As great as the

opportunity cost

of not developing it and which

we are currently already suffering

. Industrial activity contributes to the creation of added value, investment in capital and innovation. The industry, for example, allows opening the doors of the global market to a small region thanks to a small company that generates opportunities and prevents the loss of population. These companies act as a backbone of wealth so that it reaches to all corners of a country and its regions. But to do this,

they need more support and fewer bureaucratic obstacles

to achieve greater dynamism and investment capacity. Only in this way will they be able to obtain greater income and improve the conditions of their employees to attract talent that in turn allows them to increase their

competitiveness

at a global level," says

Guillermo Julio Sáez

, head of Talent, Market Studies and Compensation at Robert Walters.