The Ministry of Social Security will publish this Tuesday at 9 am the affiliation data for the month of August. Associated with the unemployment data, published by the Ministry of Labor and which go hand in hand, this statistic will offer a panoramic photograph of the labor market during a highly anticipated summer after reaching a record employment. How will the month of August end? Traditionally, with a destruction of the jobs most associated with tourist services.
Thanks to the labor reform, summer jobs remain mostly temporary: based on the daily number of affiliates, August garnered 21.2 million affiliations in the first half of the month, 183,000 fewer workers than in the whole of July (21.38 million). The destruction of jobs at the end of the summer continues after the pandemic, which shows that Summer employment remains seasonal and the pattern has not changed enoughThis contrasts with the maximum number of daily affiliations recorded by Social Security in July, with 21.42 million affiliations recorded on Monday and Friday of the third week of the seventh month of the year.
What details do economists find? Javier Santacruz points out that the traditional holidays, during the months of July and August, set the bulk of hiring during the summer months. Now, monitoring the evolution of employment is more diffuse in terms of calendar because tourism also “extends” the periods of high demand and, consequently, the hiring of personnel. The holiday periods are distributed according to the good weather, from May and even until October.
“August and probably September will reveal how great the difficulties in job creation are in Spain, because Growth based on massive contract signing is not sustainable“, Santacruz points out. The economist clarifies that the “massive signing of contracts” that leaves temporary and short-term contracts can lead, in the long term, to an obstacle for those who want to enter the labor market and who wish to do so with a stable employment relationship. The forecast, according to this expert, is lukewarm because it erases the effect of the employment that the public sector will create.
“The massive signing of contracts is interesting because it means that the employment model in Spain has not changed after the labor reform. At least, not enough,” Santacruz tells elEconomista.es. Temporary work, undeclared work and jobs closely linked to tourist services are on the agenda and will lead to job losses at the end of the summer.
