The labor market will maintain and exceed in 2022 the thrust that has characterized it during the recently closed 2021. If last year the Spanish economy recovered the muscle lost after the first hit of the covid, during the present it will gain muscle in quantity and quality. This is reflected in the forecasts published this Wednesday by the Manpower consulting firm, with an increase in the occupation of 638,000 people (81,000 more than those generated during 2021). Plus permanent rather than temporary employment and more full days than part-time, according to estimates made by the UAB professor emeritus Josep Oliver, which, notwithstanding and despite the entry into force of the new labour reform, does not predict that the high contingency levels – the highest in the EU – will register a drastic decline.
Any forecast is subject to conditions and those of this 2022 are loaded with uncertain variables that can qualify the final result, from the elevated inflation and whether or not it will extend beyond the equator of the year, passing through the ups and downs of the covid variants o the degree of deployment and execution of NextGeneration funds. If these variables do not generate significant disturbances, the Spanish economy will extend its love affair with employment, take advantage of the run it has been in in 2021 and break occupancy records, clearly above the best moments prior to the bursting of the real estate and financial bubble.
Simplifying the different forecast panels, the robot portrait of the newly employed person during 2022 will be that of a woman, between 35 and 66 years old, with university studies and of migrant origin. And the driving sectors of this boom in occupation will be, paradoxically, the same as a decade before: the services -with the hostelry at the head- and the construction. And it is that Manpower augurs for the industry, at least in the short term, a secondary role, at the expense of the deployment and the transformative effect that the deployment of European funds may or may not have in the medium term. According to the report presented this Wednesday, Spain will close 2022 with 20.2 million employed and 2023 with 20.7 million. In 2007, a peak of 20.5 million active workers was reached.
Higher quality employment
The pending issue in the Spanish labor market is to gain in quality, not so much in quantity, of employment. Manpower’s forecasts indicate that this growth will unfold via full-time contracts, reducing the bias unwanted, which is one of the most recurrent causes of income deficit and, at its most extreme, of working poverty. Underemployment (wanting to work more hours) will be reduced by 6.7% and three times more full-time than part-time contracts will be signed.
Despite the fact that more temporary contracts will continue to be signed – at the expense of the unforeseen effects that the new labor reform may have – but a greater volume of permanent employment will be consolidated, specifically, 28% more permanent than temporary ones will be created. This gap between what has been created and what is consolidated is also visible in the types of profiles. Well, although an equal number of qualified and unskilled worker contracts will be signed, at the end of the year the balance of skilled workers consolidated will be almost five times higher than that of unskilled.
Unknown about unemployment rates
What effect will this employment boom have on the rates of unemployment? It will depend on the movements in the workforce. If this does not vary, that is, if there are the same people potentially available to work, if the occupation rises, unemployment will decrease. But if the active population increases, either due to the mobilization of the inactive due to the prospects of finding work due to strong labor mobility or due to the arrival of migrants, the unemployment rate may not decrease or decrease with less intensity. That is why Manpower’s forecasts contemplate an unemployment rate range for 2023 of between 10.5% and 13.9% (currently it is at 15.1%). The most likely scenario being, according to Professor Oliver, from among the 11.4 and 12.2%.