Small and medium -sized companies (SMEs) are observing how labor costs, regulatory demands, taxes and regulatory obstacles They are preventing good growth of their businessesat least according to the great macroeconomic figures offered by Spain and that are not reflected in their day to day. This is aimed by the last CEPYME indicator corresponding to the closure of 2024, a report in which they find that the accumulated rise of total costs They assume have fired 24.5% since the pandemic.
Of all these charges, the one linked to labor costs, with contributions, is the one that causes the most erosion in business accounts. And the smaller the company, the greater the impact. Specifically, the increase in labor costs has been 25.1% for small businesses since 2021, and 19% in the case of medium -sized ones. For Cepyme, this “strong rise delves the vulnerability of the firms of less size, so they create less employment than those of other segments” at the same time that they see their possibilities of investing or gaining size, where appropriate.
The president of Cepyme, Gerardo Cuerva, has alerted in front of this difficult situation and has asked that “The standards are softened and that labor costs are not increased.” “We cannot endure it, because there is a dangerous spiral in which there is less and less profitability,” he says when analyzing this indicator. “We cannot be timorats in the request that the increase in costs that suffocates us,” he says while warning that “the panorama is bleak over the new measures.” It refers to the possibility of implanting the reduction of working hours to 37.5 hours, after the last increase in the minimum wage, as well as the increase in social contributions applied by the Government since the beginning of the year.
In addition, Cepyme warns that this increase in labor costs is not accompanied by “significant” improvements in the productivity of companies, which remains inferior to that registered before the COVID. In fact, The average productivity of SMEs is 3.6% lower to that of the third quarter of 2022, when the best data was recorded.
Profitability in minimums
Profitability is also less than registered in 2019. And this despite the increase in sales. In fact, Inflation adjusted profitability is 15.4% lower that in presitmus in small businesses compared to 10.4% that decreases in medium size.
All the factors that include the last confederation report show a complex reality for these businesses. For example, the operational costs have increased 1.2% In the last two years for microenterprises against decreases of 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively, for small and medium. And although the average price of energy was reduced by 1% in the last part of 2024 per eighth consecutive trimester, these invoices remain 77.8% higher than before the pandemic, which began in 2020.
On the other hand, the Cepyme report indicates that the relationship of monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB) He has derived that the average type of interest they pay relating to the fourth quarter, of 4.26%, is the smallest since March 2023, something that has benefited the three SME sizes. However, the report points out, these types of financing remain higher than those before those at the end of the year 2022.
Report an error
#growth #small #business #undermined #raising #jobs #years
