Spain has 200,000 fewer civil servants than a decade ago despite record public job offers in recent years

The Government has spent three years in a row boasting of having launched the largest public employment offer in history. In 2021 the Executive took 30,445 places out to the competition. In 2022 there were 34,151 and last Tuesday it approved 39,574 for 2023, in the middle of the campaign for an election from which the Government will have to implement that offer of public employment. However, these calls and those that have been launched by autonomous communities and town halls in the last decade have not been able to compensate for the losses of personnel that have occurred since 2012. The reality is that Spain today has 213,935 civil servants less than a decade ago.

This is reflected in the statistics of public employees prepared every six months by the Ministry of Finance and Public Function. In July of last year —the latest available statistics— there were 1,457,311 civil servants registered in Spain, 13% less than a decade ago. In addition, the number of civil servants has been reduced at all levels of the administration. In the last decade, the State has lost 34,000, the autonomous communities 74,000 and local entities about 31,000.

Retirements and the low rate of replacement of positions that remain vacant are the main factors that explain the significant decline that the Spanish civil service has experienced in recent years. The aging of the workforce is perceived with particular clarity in the General State Administration (AGE), the department in which the staff of the ministries, autonomous bodies, state agencies and others are included.. In this section of the administration, 63.5% of public employees —including labor and civil servants with a position— are over 50 years old and will retire over the next 15 years.

In addition, the departures that have occurred in recent years have not been offset by new additions. With the arrival of Mariano Rajoy to the presidency of the Government in 2011, a zero replacement policy was introduced: AGE retirements were not replaced with new positions for four years, only those of the armed forces, National Police and Civil Guard were covered.

Those were times when the austerity imposed by Brussels forced the Executive to reduce public spending to reduce the deficit and this formula was chosen to avoid cutting wages further.. Starting in 2016, some pensions were restored (100% in priority sectors), but the general replacement rate did not reach 100% again until 2021.

The decline in the number of civil servants has meant that the central State now has fewer public employees at its service than ten years ago, while the autonomous communities and local entities have gained personnel. The central administration —including the armed forces, National Police, Civil Guard and Justice Administration— now has 64,443 fewer employees than in 2012. However, the autonomies and local administrations —where the civil service has less weight in the templates to the detriment of labor personnel and other contracts— have gained 117,851 and 64,443 more workers, respectively.

This reduction in public sector staff is having visible consequences in some services. A clear example is Social Security, where the insufficiency of personnel to serve the public is manifest.. In 2012, 29,909 public employees worked for Social Security, of which only 23,692 remained last year (20% less). And in this time the workload of the entity has multiplied. Social Security now manages two million more pensions and has been entrusted with new benefits such as the Minimum Vital Income.

Madrid, leader in state public employment

At the regional level, most of the state public employment is concentrated in the Community of Madrid. Something that is not surprising if one takes into account that the bulk of the central administration is located in the capital of the country.. In the Community of Madrid there are 37 public employees of the State for every 1,000 inhabitants, a proportion that triples the average of 11 employees at the national level.

In contrast, the regions in which the state public sector has less weight are Catalonia (3.4 employees per 1,000 inhabitants), the Basque Country (4.3) and Navarra (6.3).. A fact that has a lot to do with the fact that these territories are the ones that have the most transferred powers.

However, if we analyze public employment as a whole, also taking into account workers in regional and local administration, the picture changes.. Thus, Extremadura, with 86 public employees per 1,000 inhabitants, is the autonomous region of Spain with the highest rate of public employment over the population. They are followed by Aragon (75), Castilla y León (69.5), Castilla-La Mancha (64), Navarra (63), Asturias (62), Canarias (61), Madrid (60), Murcia (59.5), Cantabria (59), Andalusia (58) and Galicia (58), all of them above the national average (57.6). Among the territories with fewer public employees per inhabitant are La Rioja (57), the Basque Country (55), the Balearic Islands (52), the Valencian Community (51) and Catalonia (44).