The month of July returned to normal after the bad data of the same month last year. In the last month, employment was created, with 21,945 more average affiliates, and the number of unemployed was reduced, with 10,968 less, according to data published this Wednesday by the Ministries of Social Security and Labor.
With this evolution, the labor market is at record levels in the last fifteen years. Employment -measured as average affiliation to Social Security- is at maximum levels, with more than 20.8 million workers. In the case of the unemployed, the figure of 2.67 million is the lowest since 2008.
What does not change are some characteristics of employment in July. In the month more than 110,000 jobs in education were destroyed. The end of classes in June probably led to many teachers and other teaching staff losing their jobs. Instead, this drop in employment was largely offset by hiring in seasonal sectors such as hospitality, which gained more than 23,000 affiliates or 41,000 in commerce.
The data for July show positive continuity in the labor market, which was already indicated by the Active Population Survey (EPA) for the second quarter. Even so, Spain is the European Union country with the worst employment and unemployment figures.
The Ministry of Social Security has highlighted in a statement that “the interannual rate of employment growth accelerated to 2.7% in the month of July, one tenth more than the previous month.” And it has calculated that “from the pre-pandemic level, almost 1.3 million jobs have been created.”
From the Ministry of Labor it is stated that “unemployment has fallen by 205,938 people in interannual terms” and that “unemployment among women stands at 1.61 million, its minimum value in 15 years.”
