Social Security registered 21,301,787 contributors in November, discounting seasonality and the calendar effect. This represents an increase of 495,428 employed people so far this year. It has now been 55 months of uninterrupted growth in employment in this series, after adding 13,116 new registrations this month, which takes the series to a new high.
In seasonally adjusted terms, the figure for total contributors has increased by 1.94 million since before the pandemic.
The daily series has exceeded 21.3 million contributors since 18 November.
The average number of contributors (original series) also exceeded 21.3 million (21,302,463), which means that it is the November with the highest level of employment in the historical series, with 496,389 more than a year ago (+2.4%). Although this is 30,051 fewer employed than in October, it is a slightly better performance than the average for 2017, 2018 and 2019.
In month-on-month comparisons by sector, in the General Regime, Education stands out, which continues to grow (2.2%). Trade (0.9%), Construction (0.7%) and Transport (0.5%), among others, also added contributors. Hotels and restaurants fell 7.6%.
In year-on-year terms, most of the sectors of the General Regime gained contributors. Agriculture grew 5.6%, and employment in Transport and Warehousing (+5%), Education (+4.9%), and Hotels and Restaurants (+4.4%) increased nearly 5%. There is also an increase in contributors especially in Scientific and Technical Professional Activities (3.7%).
The number of self-employed, meanwhile, is close to 3.4 million (RETA and SETA), with 3,385,663 self-employed workers, after adding 41,961 workers in the last year, thanks to the pull of the high value-added sectors. In the year-on-year comparison, 47,237 more workers have been registered in the RETA alone, excluding the agricultural self-employed, reaching 3.22 million, the highest figure in the series since 2008. In the last year, Information and Communications and Scientific and Technical Professional Activities have added 21,083 self-employed workers.
In the last decade, employment of foreigners has grown faster than that of nationals. In November, contributors from other countries accounted for 13.5% of the total; this is 2.9 million workers in the original series, 226,965 more than a year ago.
If we focus on the areas most affected by the DANA, contributor data so far shows no impact on employment. Social Security contributors in the province of Valencia increased 11,217 compared to October and 24,659 compared to a year ago, to a total of 1,170,026.
Higher employment growth than other major European economies
Job creation in Spain (+8%) exceeds that of the major European countries (Italy, +5.1%; France, +2.3%; Germany, +1.7%) since the end of 2021, before the entry into force of the labour reform
10.1 million women contributors
In November, the average number of women contributors once again exceeded 10 million, with 10,087,343 employed women, representing 47.4% of the total number of workers, a percentage at historic highs.
The growth in female employment is 9.2% since the year before the labour reform and is 2.5 percentage points higher than the increase among men, which is 6.7%. In year-on-year terms, the figure for women contributors is also outpacing that of male contributors: 2.6%, compared to 2.2% for men.
Youth employment also shows above-average dynamism, with an increase of 17.7% since 2021, which is up to 9.9 points higher than overall employment growth (7.8%), i.e. it is growing more than twice as fast as the average.
High value-added occupations
The increased contributor figures compared to the pre-pandemic level is particularly strong in high value-added sectors, such as Information and Communications and Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities. These activities also show significant growth so far in 2024 (with 76,000 more workers) and increases of around 4%, compared to the national average of 2.7%.
Almost 3.7 million more workers with permanent contracts since the labour reform was passed
Not only are there more jobs, their quality has also increased. There are currently more than 14.7 million people in employment with permanent contracts, of whom more than 9.7 million work full-time. This represents almost 3.7 million more contributors (3,684,379) with permanent contracts since the approval of the labour reform.
In addition, the average duration of contracts continues to increase and the number of days of those on sick leave has risen by 32.4% in the period January-November this year compared to the same period in 2019. Some 58% of contributors have a full-time contract, compared to 50.2% in November 2021, before the labour reform.
The dynamism of the labour market and the increase in the quality of employment is helping to strengthen the sustainability of the pension system (revenues from social security contributions are increasing at a rate of around 8%) and the ratio of contributors to pensioners stands at 2.43, levels that show the sustainability of the pension system.
Non official translation
