Although the unemployment rate is still above 12%, the number of workers has once again surpassed the 20 million mark, with temporary employment at an all-time low following the labour reform. But there is a catch to this balance sheet: 55% of the net increase in employment during the legislature corresponds to public sector jobs, which are also confirmed as the most precarious.
As the newspaper El Economista explains, according to data from the Labour Force Survey, the increase in employment between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2022 was only 497,000 people. Of these, 54.9% were in the public sector.
The weight of the growth is disproportionate considering that public sector workers accounted for only 16.7% of total employment at the end of 2022. The enrolment data, prepared using a methodology that is very different from that of the LFS, but more up-to-date, show similar figures. The average increase in enrolment in the General Regime and the RETA (Spanish initials for the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers) between November 2019 and last February was 870,000, 48% of which corresponds to the public sector.
However, the Executive is not directly responsible for this recruitment. Six out of every ten public posts correspond to local councils and autonomous communities, with competences in the management of health, education and social services. And they registered 277,900 more employed people in the fourth quarter of 2022 than in the same period of 2019. Government-dependent workers (workers in central government, Social Security and public enterprises) fell by 14,900 workers.
