The Active Population Survey (EPA), for the third quarter published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), is the sample that Our country is being able to link economic growth as communicating vesselsthe great digital and ecological transformations, and the creation of employment, with an ambitious, rigorous economic policy close to reality and the productive and labor needs of our country.
In the third quarter of 2024, Spain has reached maximum occupation and active population in the historical series. The number of employed people increased to 21.82 million workers, with the creation of 138,300 jobs in the last quarter. In seasonally adjusted terms, employment stood at 21.66 million people, 79,600 more than in the last quarter.
A job that is of higher qualityas can be seen from the data that 15.6 million workers have a permanent contract, the highest number in the historical series, with 102,000 more people with stable employment.
A very relevant fact is that today, in Spain, one of every two contracts that are signed are indefinite; compared to one in ten that were signed before the labor reform in 2021. It is also important to highlight that around 68 percent of the working-age population, between 16 and 64 years old, is employed, and that the active population has reached 24.5 million employed people, the highest number in history.
All of this shows not only the good state of the labor market and the economic context that Spain is going throughbut also that we have managed to turn around the temporalityone of the problems that has plagued our labor market for 40 years. And, currently, temporary employment is for the first time below the European average in private employment.
The data shows other even more positive indicators to have more people working than ever in the history of our country. For example, that The engine of job creation in our country is currently the private sectoralso reaching another maximum employment, with almost 18.3 million people, creating all employment in the last quarter, and showing a more dynamic labor market than in previous decades.
In this context, it is important to remember that not only is more and better quality employment created, but also unemployment is progressively reducing with the horizon of reaching a structural unemployment rate of 8 percent, which allows us to guarantee that our country is in a situation of full employment in 2027.
So, the unemployment rate continued to fallto 11.2 percent, the lowest since 2008, with a reduction of more than 67,700 people in the last 3 months, with the reduction in female unemployment being especially significant, which fell by 5.3 percent in the third quarter, up to 12.5 percent.
There are elements that have been decisive in this reduction in female unemployment, of that greater creation of stable employment for womenwhich now has more than 10 million members and, therefore, almost half of the active labor market; and also that the gender pay gap has been reduced five points since 2018. Without a doubt, one of them has been the progressive increase, in these six years, of the minimum interprofessional salary until it reaches 1,134 euros, 54 percent more than in 2018 when it stood at 735 euros because This has mainly benefited young workers and women who are at the lowest salary levels.
All these good employment data, which are the best balance of a government in these more than forty years of democracy, also contribute the good economic prospects that determine the forecasts of all national and international organizations, public and private.
From FUNCAS, which places GDP growth in 2024 at 3 percent, to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has raised five tenths these days growth forecasts for Spain up to 2.9 percentplacing us as the advanced economy that will grow the most this year in the world ahead of the United States (2.8 percent) or the main European economies such as France (1.3 percent, the United Kingdom (1.1 percent percent), Italy (0.7 percent) or Germany (0 percent).
Along these same lines, Eurostat has confirmed that, in the second quarter of 2024, Spain grew four times more than the European Union averageand the INE has placed inflation in September at 1.5 percent, the lowest in three and a half years, and has revised year-on-year GDP growth upwards to 3.1 percent.
All this shows that today The economic reality of our country is doing well based on the data and not to grandiose, disproportionate and excessive expressions of some leaders. Those who applauded José María Aznar when he predicted in 1997 that Spain was doing well in the heat of the real estate bubble and speculation, today deny the evidence that every graph, every statistic, demonstrates about the economic context of the real Spain in 2024.
“Cheating the solitaire”as the traditional expression goes, is never a good option when it comes to analyzing the economy and its future prospects. Despite their regret, Spain is now doing better than well.
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