For the first time in history, foreigners will monopolize all employment created in the year 2022 and positions of citizens will be destroyed
Not a single job of the nearly 300,000 created in 2022 was in the hands of Spaniards. In addition, for the first time in history in a year of economic recovery, national employment was destroyed, while all new affiliation was due to foreigners.
Specifically, there were 278,000 new contributors in 2022, of whom 240,200 were immigrants and 43,100 were dual nationals (mostly people from Latin America who have lived in Spain for many years), according to data from the latest Survey Active Population (EPA). On the contrary, 4,400 positions occupied by Spaniards disappeared, something that had never happened before.
It therefore presupposes a total break with the natural trend that the Spanish labor market has maintained year after year until now. Until 2019, the vast majority of new jobs were for Spaniards, except in specific cases, those related to the mass arrival of immigrants. But in 2019 a change is already taking place and it even ends with half of all employment for foreigners. This phenomenon worsened in 2020 and before the pandemic wreaked its havoc there was a ‘sorpasso’ and immigrant work outnumbered Spanish. Now, at the end of 2022, it has even turned around and all jobs created have been for foreigners.
This trend reversal – which will intensify in the coming years, as more than nine million immigrants are expected to arrive by 2050 – is also taking place during a debate on whether the arrival of foreigners to fill vacancies in the EU should be facilitated. construction industry, which warns that they will need half a million workers in the next four years.
However, the unions and Unidas Podemos, led by Vice President Yolanda Díaz, strongly oppose bringing foreign workers into the country of three million unemployed. “We are not going along with this facile trend that will soon say that people in Spain don’t want to work,” UGT general secretary Pepe Álvarez said recently.
But the question is that of those three million unemployed, more than 2.5 million are Hispanic and yet no employment has been created for them in the past year. What are the causes? The main reason must be sought in the sectors in which employment has been created, because “an over-representation of foreigners is beginning to emerge in sectors such as services and construction,” said Javier Blasco, director of the Adecco Group Institute.
The service sector, especially the hotel, trade, transport and logistics sector, has actually boosted employment in 2022, to the point of adding 314,000 members. Jobs have also been created in the manufacturing industry (55,300), but at a much slower pace and mainly for blue-collar workers, and some in construction (14,900 new employees). These are lower-paid jobs that require fewer qualifications, and are therefore more occupied by immigrants, emphasizes Andreu Cruañas, president of Asempleo, the employers’ organization of employment agencies.
On the contrary, members were lost in banking and insurance, in professional, scientific and administrative activities, as well as in education, while health remained practically stable; sectors all with more presence of Hispanic workers.
While the biggest drop was in agriculture, where there is also an abundance of foreign labour, CC OO points out that these nearly 87,000 fewer workers left the country to work in other sectors, largely due to lower agricultural production as due to drought and frost.
Poorer performance than a sector as affected as agriculture was recorded among the self-employed. 2022 ended with 111,200 fewer self-employed people than in 2021, the worst numbers since the series has existed in more than a decade. It is mainly due to three sectors: trade, catering and industry. Thousands of commercial and catering establishments had to close last year due to the lack of direct measures in this sector, according to complaints from the organizations of the collective.
On the contrary, the number of civil servants has skyrocketed, particularly in the second half of the year, reaching a new maximum above the 3.5 million mark.
This sharp loss of self-employment is particularly important as it is usually an early indicator of how employment will develop in the coming months, thus signaling a sharp slowdown at the beginning of the year. This is also predicted by Blasco, who predicts that “the phase of strong recovery is over and now a phase of mini-growth is coming”. The expert warns that “there is a lot of uncertainty in the regulatory framework and that is clearly hurting our ability to catch the train from industrialization to the slipstream of European funds” and requires “a more flexible model” that can easily adapt to economic cycles , something about what “the labor reform has not helped”.
This slowdown was already noticed in the latter part of 2022, when the labor market was already feeling the impact of the war in Ukraine and the price crisis, registering its worst figures in the past nine years. As a result, the number of unemployed, despite falling by almost 80,000 since 2021, has fallen below the psychological threshold of three million and is already dangerously close to 13%, a level that – according to experts – will be exceeded in the future . next months.
Another worrying fact is that long-term unemployment is rising again and is now reaching the figure of 1,282,000 unemployed with more than a year in this situation. Spain is the second country in Europe with the most unemployed for more than four years. “We need to take action on this underlying problem and mobilize resources,” claims Cruañas, denouncing that “the endemic problems of our labor market are still being seriously addressed.”
However, it should be noted that more than half of the employment created in 2022 was for people over 50, while there was strong destruction between the ages of 35 and 45. “In a climate of economic crisis, workers in those intermediate categories, who work on short-term contracts and don’t have enough seniority to escape layoffs, pay more,” explains Blasco. Nearly 140,000 jobs were also created for those under the age of 30 and nearly 70,000 for those between the ages of 45 and 50.
More balanced employment created was based on gender, to the point of adding 146,000 male affiliates and 132,000 female contributors.
The year 2022 began with changes in labor laws that marked a before and after in hiring. The veto on agency work imposed by the labor reform has brought it to minimum levels close to the European average, after years in which Spain led the way. For example, the rate is down 7.5 percentage points in 12 months, mainly due to the rise of permanent intermittent workers, rising from more than 25% in 2021 to below 18% by the end of 2022, according to the latest data from the EPA .
However, all this sharp decline is due to the private sector, while the public sector maintains its transience at alarming levels, exceeding 30%. In other words, companies have taken the absolute lead in this historic milestone in which, for the first time in decades, an endemic evil in the labor market such as agency work is significantly reduced.
The debate is: is it all about makeup or is it really diminished? Andreu Cruañas, president of Asempleo, the ETT’s employers’ association, points out that this is due to the fact that the standard has banned temporary work by vetoing any contracts, but has not abolished it. “The reality has not changed for the employee, who remains in service for the same time, receives the same salary, but on the other hand now receives no compensation when his contract ends,” he emphasizes.
It refers to the fact that the number of people who signed permanent contracts in 2022 has more than doubled to exceed 833,000, a group that appears in the statistics as indefinite and does not count as unemployed, despite having several are unable to work for months of the year. Therefore, upon termination of their activity, they do not receive the 12 days worked per year for which they were compensated when they were temporary.
However, Cruañas acknowledges that the labor reform has helped reduce fraudulent temporary contracts, but believes that the part due to the seasonality of the Spanish economy is covered by the interrupted permanent contract. “The same need as before remains, because the model of production has not changed, only that the reform has reduced the number, duration and causality,” he concludes.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
