2023 begins with slight increase in unemployment
January saw 37,000 fewer people registered with social services
The new year has begun with a slight rise in unemployment, with 5,306 more people (+1.53%) looking for work compared to the month before, according to data released on Thursday morning by Spain's ministry of labor.
In total, there were 351,644 people without work in Catalonia in January. Yet, these unemployment figures were the lowest for the month of January since 2008, when there were 282,897 jobseekers.
The slowdown comes in the post-Christmas period which usually sees less economic activity. Since 2004, the number of workers registered in jobs with social security has usually seen drops of 1% in January.
The services sector has been one of the main drivers of this increase in unemployment, with 5,348 fewer people working in the industry compared to the previous month.
Job creation has also slowed for the second consecutive month, with 37,637 fewer workers registered with social security than in December.
In all of Spain, there were 70,744 more unemployed people registered with social security compared to December, but the overall remained below three million.
In January, Catalonia saw unemployment increase at a rate lower than the national average (+2.5%).
Across Spain, there were 20,081,224 social security members, the highest in history for the month of January.
Effects of labor reform
One year after the labor reform came into force, aiming to reduce the number of temporary contracts, the effects on recruitment are noticeable. There are now fewer new jobs in the market, but more workers with permanent contracts - 44% of the total, six percentage points more than in December.
This group of workers with permanent contracts includes intermittent fixed workers, who are activated and deactivated throughout the year.
In January, there were 185,866 work contracts signed in Catalonia, 17.5% less than a year ago. Of those, 82,502 were permanent contracts, 22.9% more than the previous month.
Compared to January 2022, permanent employment has significantly risen (+76.3%) with 35,699 more posts. In parallel, temporary contracts have dropped 42% over the past year, with 75,020 fewer signatures, down to 103,364 in January.
Two ways of calculating unemployment
The figures differ from those from the latest Labor Force Survey (EPA in Spanish), which is published every three months. The variation in the figures can be attributed to the different methods for gathering data.
The labor ministry figures published in this article, are based on the number of jobseekers registered with the Employment Service, while the EPA figures are taken from surveying a broad sample of 65,000 households - or some 200,000 individuals - all over Spain.
According to the latest EPA, showing figures for the fourth quarter of 2022, the jobless rate stood at 9.91%.
This meant an overall increase of 21,900 people without jobs to a total of 387,200 people.
However, the last quarter of last year also saw the highest figure of workers in jobs since 2007.
Compared to 2021, there were 8,200 fewer unemployed people, representing 2% of the overall figures that have moderated after seeing annual reductions of over 10% in the previous four quarters.