Social Security paid out €11,945.6 million in contributory pensions in February, 3 billion more than the 8,946.9 million in March 2018, a few months before Pedro Sánchez came to government.
The average monthly retirement pension shot up from the €1,260 it stood at in December 2022 to €1,372 per month, up 9.7%. And since there were no differences by amount bracket, the maximum pension exceeded €3,000 per month for the first time. The average amount of new pension registrations in February this year (the latest data available) was €1,524 per month.
Meanwhile, Social Security debt exceeded €100 billion in November for the first time, approximately 13% more than a year earlier and 200% more than in June 2018, when Sánchez took office, according to data published by the Bank of Spain (BdE). The deficit stands at around 0.5%, but to this figure would have to be added transfers from the state for so-called “improper spending”, which amount to around €20 billion.
In this context, the new pension reform will be approved which, according to FEDEA, “will increase the expected expenditure considerably, but will only modestly increase the system’s revenue, with the result that the basic deficit of the Social Security system will increase most significantly in the coming decades, approaching 5 points of GDP around 2050”.
