‘Spectacular’ year for employment
THE JOB market in 2021 recovered to levels from prior to the pandemic with record employment figures not seen since before the financial crash of 2008.
Last year 840,600 jobs were created, the most since 2005, and unemployment fell by 616,000 to 13.33%, according to the active population survey (EPA) of people registered employed or unemployed, published by the national statistics institute (INE) on Thursday.
Thanks to the vaccination programme and relaxation of restrictions, the number of people in work reached 20,184,900, compared to 19,966,900 in the fourth quarter of 2019.
This increase of 218,000 not only restores the upward trend that was halted by the pandemic, but also its subsequent impact, which resulted in only 19,344,300 people being in work at the end of 2020, explained state broadcaster RTVE.
The last time this many jobs were created was at the height
of the property boom and the 2005 figures were abnormally boosted by the government’s emergency regularisation of foreigners with undeclared employment.
In the third quarter of 2021 the number of people employed increased by 153,900 and hit 20 million for the first time since 2008.
The active population also increased by 224,700 to 58.65% of the total population.
Prime minister Pedro Sánchez
said on Twitter the EPA ‘corroborates that the fair recovery is advancing’, and the vice-president for economic affairs, Nadia Calviño called the data ‘spectacular’.
“It enables us to start 2022 in good form with a positive economic perspective,” she said, telling state radio RNE this was despite the pandemic and the supply chain problems.
The data showed that 479,000 women had found work, compared to 361,000 men, with 744,300 new jobs in the private sector and 96,400 in the public.
In the fourth quarter, despite the Omicron variant, there were 78,700 new jobs in agriculture, 45,900 in services and 37,100 in industry, but 7,700 lost in construction.
Nevertheless, all sectors grew over the year, especially services by 705,400 workers, industry by 71,500, agriculture by 58,000 and construction by 5,700.
There were 3,191,900 unemployed at the end of 2019, 13.78% of the active population, but now there are 3,103,800, i.e. (13.33%, the lowest percentage since 2008 (11.23%), just before the fall of Lehman Brothers sparked the financial crisis, noted RTVE.
Youth unemployment dropped by 119,800 to 452,000, which is 30.69% of the active population – 9.4% less than the end of 2020 and down from 31.15% after the third quarter of this year, but still higher than the 30.51% at the end of 2019.