Employment is weakening. Social Security and the Department of Labor released data for January, giving not very encouraging figures for the beginning of 2023. In Spain, more than 200,000 jobs have been destroyed due to the end of the Christmas season. Restoration and commerce are the ones that pull the system in the final sprint of the year when hired in December. However, the year came with thousands of people without wages in both sectors.

In particular, trade lost 39,600 positions; about 5,000 more than last year. The hotel, for its part, burned up to 43,000 jobs. However, this figure is better than last year, when Spanish bars and restaurants reduced their mass by 54,000 people, which also coincided with the spread of the coronavirus and the micron variant.

But public sectors, in which most of the workers work on government contracts, have also been hit by the latest employment earthquake. And it is that healthcare, public administration and education lost 22,150 jobs in 31 days.

The first one lost 17,329 people in a month, which means a 1% reduction in the labor force in the sector. There are currently 1.78 million people working in the healthcare system, according to data from the Department of Social Security released this Thursday. The numbers will be better if zoomed in as compared to January 2022, a total of 33,573 workers were employed in the health sector.

In education, the numbers were down by 2,666 employees compared to December. As with health care, the annual balance is also positive, with 33,537 more teachers than 12 months ago, for a total of 1.079 million people working in the sector.

But by far the worst of the three sectors is Social Security, which also includes defense contracts. In just one month, 12,555 jobs were cut, which is 1%. As of the end of January, 1.2 million employees depend on social security, public administration and defense.

There are 3.5 million civil servants in our country, which is 17.07% of the 20.54 million employed in the country, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) for the third quarter of 2022. This figure includes not only career civil servants, but also working personnel in the service of government agencies, such as the armed forces or local administration, and other personnel, such as senior officials, public company personnel and administrative workers with contracts of shorter duration or intermittent fixed contracts. contracts.

Fewer self-employed and companies

On the other hand, the membership data also reveals other troubling data about our country’s business structure, as the interprofessional minimum wage hike was revealed this week.

If we look at the self-employed, there are 3.3 million in Spain, 20,800 people less that just a month ago. Compared to January last year, the figure is still negative, and there are 4,631 fewer people in the self-employed system.

For companies, the balance is also negative as 4,300 companies closed in December, adding to the bad data due to the pandemic. In particular, due to the fact that the coronavirus forced us to limit ourselves, there were 50,000 fewer companies in total.

Government talks about ‘market transformation’

Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy Joaquín Pérez Rey and Secretary of State for Social Security and Pensions Borja Suárez this Thursday pushed for a “great transformation of the labor market” despite unemployment rising by 70,744. people in January, and Social Security lost an average of 215,047 savers.

Pérez Rey explained that an increase in registered unemployment “can never be good news” and that it should be interpreted “with rigor and the necessary caution”.

However, the Minister of Employment specified that the increase in the number of unemployed in January is in line with the usual behavior of this month, “marked by the seasonality of December and the Christmas season”, and, in addition, the increase is less than 80,000 unemployed noted in the historical series.