Registered unemployment figures for August reflect a 4.8% year-on-year decline to 2.57 million people. But they also reveal a shift in the opposite direction led by those who register with public employment services to find work but are not counted as unemployed. They increased by 8% to 1.57 million, marking a historic figure. This trend is explained by the inactivity of permanent discontinuous employees, but also by the increase in the number of candidates with “limited availability”, whose job search is carried out in conditions affected by conciliation problems. and end up being excluded from the “official” classification of unemployed people.
The very different behaviour of job seekers and non-unemployed people has sparked the debate about the reliability of employment statistics after the pandemic, which makes sense considering that since August 2019, registered unemployment has fallen by 493,683 people (16.1%). and the sum of “employees” or those with limited availability increased by 447,228, or 39.6%.
This has led to a relative “stagnation” in the total number of applicants in recent years. In August 2019, there were 4.4 million, but last month they remained at 4.36 millionTo understand this development, we have to go back to 2020.
The ERTEs promoted to deal with the consequences of the health crisis triggered between 2020 and 2021 the number of job seekers with a job (since the SEPE compensated them with unemployment benefits). the salaries of workers in companies that had to temporarily close their shutters due to lockdowns). The resumption of activity has completely diluted this effect around 2022, leaving room for another factor that has focused the controversy over the last two and a half years: labor reform.
The weight of the discontinuous fixed
The commitment to permanent, discontinuous jobs to replace temporary jobs has increased the number of people in this type of job who become inactive until their company calls them back. A situation in which they do not work, do not receive a salary and are removed from social security for non-contribution, but they are not counted as registered unemployed for the purposes of SEPE statistics, since the contract is still valid.
In this case, they are included among the employed applicants with an employment relationship, a group that has increased considerably since the labor reform, while the rest of the employed applicants (which include those covered by the ERTE but also those who work, but they turn to a public employment service to look for another job) have lost importance in the figures.
The data published this Tuesday by the Labour Party constitute a step forward and do not differentiate between employed applicants themselves and those who only have an “employment relationship”, and even less how many of the latter are definitively interrupted, but the evolution after the legal change leaves no trace. There is room for doubt: although a comparison with what happened in 2020 and 2021 is not possible (due to the aforementioned effect of the ERTEs), if we go back to the last comparable year, 2019, we see an exceptional rebound in job seekers, of 35%, to 1.23 million. During this period, unemployment fell by 16.1%.
Labor argues that the classification of groups of claimants considered unemployed or not has been the same since 1985 and that discontinuous workers who are permanently inactive have always been considered “employed with an employment relationship.” This is true, but the Ministry’s refusal to provide figures (even though its owner, Yolanda Díaz, promised to do so more than a year and a half ago) prevents us from knowing its current impact on the figures.
Conciliation: the unexpected key
In addition, the non-employed job seekers (DENOS) but who are not considered registered unemployed It has also fallen and is at its historic low for the month of August, with barely 190,000. A development in which the government sees proof of the improvement in employment beyond a supposed “catch-up”: Unemployment excluded from the standard definition is also decreasingBut many experts attribute this decline to a transfer of agricultural workers benefiting from sectoral aid and subsidies, such as the former PER, They now work under a fixed-term contract with no fixed term.
But another group of job seekers has gone unnoticed in this debate: those whose availability is limited or who “They are demanding specific jobs“and they reached their record after up 55% since 2019with 344,000 last August.
This is a broad category that includes several cases, such as the unemployed and job seekers in training. A nuance that fuels the thesis of a supposed “make-up”, but this argument poses a problem: if there are fewer and fewer unemployed, It makes no sense that there will be more people who will continue to be educated in 2024 than those who experienced the financial crisis..
Another explanation, which, as we will see, is supported by other statistics, is that more and more people are registering as unemployed in search of work. under special conditionssuch as weekend hours or teleworking; or who ask for help to work for themselves from home. Many of them advise when registering with employment agencies that their availability to take up a position (or training) is very limited by your personal situation. Although this means not being counted as unemployed or receiving unemployment benefits.
The question of how much this hinders job search is hidden under the controversy of the distortions introduced into employment statistics by the labor reform. Although this is a problem linked to a clear gender bias: the number of men registered with limited availability has increased by 39% since 2019. But among women, it has increased by 72%. Nevertheless, the fact that, despite these difficulties, these people are encouraged to look for work is good news because it shows to greater confidence in the labor market.
This assumption is reflected in data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which shows that people looking for work but are not available to start work immediately (they are therefore not considered unemployed for the INE), they have climbed by 38.3% since 2019, to exceed 320,000, while the discouraged (who want to work less well are not looking for work) fell by 8%.
The evolution of these two groups (which are part of what is called “slack”) testifies to a “reactivation” of people who are not working, linked to the fall in unemployment “strictly speaking”, the definition of which is limited to those who are actively looking for a job and are available to work at the moment. But as SEPE data confirms, many of them find themselves overwhelmed by the difficulty of reconciling.
A similar situation is popular among busy people: Since 2019, the percentage of people willing to work fewer hours with a pay cut has increased by two points, from 3.1% to 5.1%. A scenario that must in any case be analyzed within the framework of an effective design of employment policies that respond to the reality of the labor market. that public statistics may not collect the necessary breadth to establish the best diagnosis.
