Last year, Spain managed to reduce unemployment and create employment at a higher rate than in 2022, despite the destruction of 19,000 jobs in the final stretch of the year.. According to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA) published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 2023 closed with a total of 21,246,900 employed people, a record number for the fourth quarter of the year.. At the same time, unemployment fell to its lowest level since 2008, after falling from the previous year by 193,400 people.
In the last year, between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the same period of 2023, 783,000 jobs have been created in Spain, an increase of 3.8% that almost triples the 278,900 generated a year before. With the exception of the increase of 840,600 employed people registered in 2021 thanks to the recovery of the labor market after the setback of the pandemic, 2023 is the largest annual increase in employment since the financial crisis and there are three consecutive years of increases. To find a higher annual increase in the historical series, we must go back to 2005, when 1,018,400 jobs were created throughout the year in the midst of the real estate bubble and coinciding with an extraordinary regularization of foreigners.
Despite this growth in employment recorded throughout the year, in the final stretch 19,000 jobs were destroyed compared to the volume of employees in the third quarter, in which the historical series reached its highest record to date with a total of 21,265,900 people working in Spain. However, the decrease in employment recorded in the last quarter is less than the 81,900 workers lost in the same period of 2022.. In fact, this is the smallest decrease recorded between the months of October and December in two decades, although the push of the Christmas campaign has not been enough to increase the number of employed people in the last three months of the year, as happened in 2019 and in the recovery after the pandemic.
On the unemployment side, last year ended with 2,830,600 unemployed, the lowest volume of unemployed registered in a fourth quarter of the year since 2007, before the bursting of the real estate bubble. The 2023 figure cuts the 2022 figure by 193,400 people, a decrease of 6.4% that doubles the reduction of 79,800 unemployed recorded a year before. Topped off with a final drop of 24,600 people in the last three months of the year, unemployment has accumulated three consecutive years of declines. The unemployment rate has decreased by one tenth compared to the third quarter and by more than one point compared to the previous year, to 11.76%.
The Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body, has valued these data and has highlighted that they have been achieved at the same time that the active population has increased. “We have been able to absorb an increase of 600,000 people in terms of activity and continue reducing the unemployment rate and the number of people unemployed,” he highlighted, referring to 2023 as an “excellent” year for employment.. “We have data that demonstrates the strength and resilience of the recovery of the Spanish economy and the dynamism of our labor market, even in an international context that is particularly delicate and complicated,” he added.
91% of the employment created in 2023 was concentrated in the private sector, which gained 715,900 employees compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to the increase of 67,100 people in public employment to reach a new maximum of 3.6 million. In particular, the services sector accounted for 80.36% of the jobs created last year, followed by construction, which gained 108,300 workers.. On the other hand, in industry and agriculture barely 28,000 and 17,500 jobs were generated respectively.
Likewise, permanent employment also set a new high at the end of 2023, exceeding 15 million people hired under this formula for the first time.. This record is the result of an increase in employees with permanent contracts by 804,000 people last year, at the same time that temporary workers were reduced by 140,300, dropping the temporary employment rate to 16.5% among employees.. “The 2023 EPA demonstrates that the policies carried out during these years are improving people's lives,” said the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.. Along the same lines, the majority of the positions created were full-time -695,400, compared to 87,600 new part-time jobs-.
The increase in employment was more pronounced among the female population, since women occupied 437,200 positions of the total jobs generated in 2023, while 345,800 were for men. In this way, female employment marked a new historical high, with 9,923,400 women working at the end of 2023. By age, the number of employed people over 55 years of age also set a new record, with 4,457,300 workers in this age group, 272,500 more than in 2022.
Furthermore, 42.6% of the jobs created last year were occupied by foreigners, increasing the volume of workers from outside the Spanish borders by 12.4% in annual terms.. In fact, foreign employment marked a new high in the historical series with a total of 3,022,300 employees, after adding 333,700 people over the last year.
“In these good data there are people who are still having a bad time and my commitment is to work for them and further expand the rights of working people,” Díaz clarified. “There is a lot to do, we must be thinking about the following objectives and here the great objective is full employment and we have to continue working towards that,” agreed the Minister of Economy.