More steady employment | National and worldwide financial system | EUROtoday

After 4 many years with non permanent employment charges of between 25% and 30%, and successive labor reforms – 2001, 2010 and 2012 – unable to cut back these excessive charges, the 2021 labor market reform has managed to finish the “Spanish exception”: immediately the share of non permanent staff in our labor market – 15.5% – is just like the Eurozone common, being even decrease – 12.3% – within the non-public sector.

Now, are we witnessing a scenario through which “contractual” temporality is successfully decreased, however “empirical” temporality will not be decreased? (as a current Fedea research advised). Is job insecurity reducing or just altering its kind?

Let's attempt to separate the financial debate from the self-serving noise. To do that, it’s essential to transcend the non permanent employment charge and search for different methods of measuring precariousness that additionally take note of the flows of registrations and withdrawals from Social Security, and the true length of the contracts.

The transformation of non permanent jobs into everlasting jobs that our labor market has skilled within the final two and a half years is spectacular, as seen in Graph 1. According to information from the EPA, between January 2022 and the primary quarter of 2024 The variety of workers with a short lived contract has been decreased by 1.5 million, concurrently creating 2.3 million common everlasting jobs and 226 thousand permanent-discontinuous jobs. That is, roughly 83% of the discount in non permanent employment is defined by the rise in unusual indefinite contracts, leaving the remaining 17% defined by the better use of fixed-discontinuous contracts (which, in any case, barely account for 3. 3% of whole jobs within the Spanish financial system).

And what occurs with the age of those contracts? In Graph 2 we will see how the share of unusual everlasting staff with greater than 6 months of seniority of their job – in relation to the full variety of workers – has gone from 70% to 76.7% between the tip of 2021 and the primary quarter of 2024. It also needs to be taken into consideration that this indicator was often decreased within the enlargement phases – between 2002 and 2007 it was decreased by 3 proportion factors, and between 2014 and 2018 by nearly 5 factors – whereas within the present part of development this indicator is rising considerably.

But along with checking what has occurred with the contractual construction, and with the true length of the contracts, an evaluation of job stability additionally requires analyzing rotation and the chance of survival of recent job signings. This research has simply been carried out by the Bank of Spain in its 2023 Annual Report and, regardless of its nonetheless preliminary nature and with the corresponding cautions, the report exhibits clear empirical proof and according to the info in Graph 2: employment In Spain it’s extra steady immediately than earlier than the 2021 labor reform.

The combination rotation charge of the labor market – measured because the sum of month-to-month registrations and cancellations in Social Security in relation to the full variety of workers – has been decreased by nearly 16% between the expansionary cycle of 2015-2019 and the present cycle of 2022-2023 (measurement that features fixed-discontinuous contracts). Likewise, the Bank of Spain exhibits how employment contracts created in Spain in 2022 have a chance of survival 5 proportion factors above the speed of contracting throughout the years 2017-2018. All these components have helped scale back outflows from employment to unemployment, from 3.3% in 2019 to 2.8% in 2023.

The extreme temporality of the labor market has subsequently been redirected, to a big extent, in the direction of employment relationships of an indefinite nature and – round a sixth – in the direction of fixed-discontinuous contracts. And it’s exactly this sharp drop in non permanent contracts – with decrease survival charges than different contracts – that’s the issue that the majority contributes to explaining the rise within the length of employment at the moment.

The reality {that a} minor a part of the abusive non permanent employment has been redirected in the direction of fixed-discontinuous contracts doesn’t cloud the present transition of our labor market. Let us do not forget that permanent-discontinuous contracts are contracts with better safety than non permanent ones, and designed exactly to supply stability and rights – amongst others, the suitable to name, the buildup of seniority or safety towards dismissal – to workers who work in sectors extremely seasonal (comparable to hospitality, eating places or agriculture). Not in useless, they’re additionally a kind of indefinite contract through which the interval of inactivity doesn’t break the employment relationship with the corporate, and is accomplished with unemployment advantages.

In any case, it’s advisable to rigorously monitor not less than 4 points. First of all, it’s pressing to ensure that the general public sector advances on the similar tempo because the non-public sector within the implementation of the labor reform (within the public sector the non permanent employment charge was nonetheless 29.5% within the first quarter of 2024).

Secondly, the primary issue of stabilization of employment is given by the robust transformation of non permanent contracts into indefinite ones however, as soon as this course of concludes, it will likely be vital to investigate intimately whether or not the soundness of the brand new indefinite contracts is just like that which existed earlier than. of the 2021 reform or not. Today we see contradictory alerts on this indicator. In any case, it may be anticipated that better use of indefinite contracts will shorten their length sooner or later (which shouldn’t be interpreted as an issue of the reform).

Third, the usage of fixed-discontinuous contracts – though it’s being fairly restricted in relation to the worldwide figures – have to be analyzed with warning to, if vital, hyperlink their use with assured minimal ranges of working days per 12 months, or to limit its use within the case of Temporary Employment Agencies (ETT), or in contracts and subcontractors.

Finally, it’s true that the 2021 labor reform has managed to considerably enhance employment stability in Spain – each contractual and actual. But it is usually true that we nonetheless have an considerable distance when it comes to labor rotation with the EU and, subsequently, there’s room to proceed enhancing.

Nacho Alvarez He is a professor of Applied Economics on the Autonomous University of Madrid

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