Spain | Job insecurity: tears in rain?

Although the performance of the job market and its composition are unambiguously favorable, the information provided by the labor authorities is insufficient to assess the impact of the labor reform on other variables, such as unemployment and hours worked.

Key points

• Key points:
• Last year, more than 7,027,000 permanent contracts were signed, 3.3 times more than in 2019, and 11,283,000 temporary contracts were signed, 45% less. As a result, the temporary contracts ratio fell to 62%, 29 points lower than in 2019.
• Ordinary permanent contracts were mainly responsible for the increase in stable employment. Nearly 60% of the increase in permanent contracts compared to 2019 was explained by the rise in ordinary contracts.
• The remaining 40 percent was due to the unprecedented growth in discontinuous fixed contracts, which was 8.8 times the number reported in 2019 to stand at more than 2,300,000 and accounted for one third of all permanent contracts.
• The growing importance of discontinuous fixed workers and their consideration as job seekers with an employment relationship when they are inactive distorts the use of registered unemployment as a measure of economic activity.
• It would be useful to have a regular working time statistic that would provide information on the employment intensity and productivity of those employed by type of contract.

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