José Luis Escrivá has defended tooth and nail his reform of the pension system this Tuesday at the meeting that the Cercle d’Economia is holding in Barcelona. The Minister of Inclusion and Social Security maintains that the approved measures, whose second phase went ahead in March with the support of the unions and the rejection of the employer, guarantee the sustainability of the system and in no case endanger the labor market. Labor costs after the reform, he has insisted, continue to be below the European average and he considers that it will hardly affect companies.
In this sense, he stressed that the aggregate labor cost in Spain is currently 23.4 euros and by 2050, with all the measures deployed, it would rise to 23.8 euros. Far below, the minister continued, the 29.2 euro labor cost per hour on average in Europe. There is no, he has insisted, loss of competitiveness, and yes, more social protection.
Escrivá has also criticized the reports from organizations such as Airef or the Bank of Spain on the sustainability of the system. “There is an understandable tendency of those who have to show that there is a problem of sustainability” of pensions and public accounts that make “very conservative scenarios, very amarrateguis”. The minister regretted that these reports draw average economic growth of 1. 4%, “who have no reference.†“They have always been wrong for 40 years,†he stated.
He has also taken out the labor reform. In his opinion, it is already having an effect on the labor market, although it is too early to make a rigorous analysis, he has qualified. “Social Security income in 2022 and now in 2023 grows at a rate of 9%. And employment at 4%. The average salary is growing very quickly due to the growth in employment. The data in this year and a half point to a considerable change in the composition of employment growth,” he commented.
