Spain had 1.4 million discontinued permanent employees at the end of 2022

The first nine months of filming the labor reform left more than 1.4 million discontinued permanent employees, half of them They were dedicated to the hospitality industry. “It is estimated that the stocks of discontinuous permanent workers went from 650,000 people to 1.42 million”, explains Fedea, which details that of the total, 518,000 ended the year 2022 in inactivity and without any type of alternative employment. The figure is close to that released by the Government in the Senate in March of last year.

The entity has tried to shed some light on the complex behavior that the text has caused on the labor market, “we have been for a few years, since the labor reform, where there are some turbulence on the data“said Florentino Felgueroso. The Fedea associate researcher has recognized the difficulty of analyzing the reality of discontinuous permanent positions in light of official statistics, has requested a greater exercise of transparency from the Executive and has put on the table additional measures to improve the reform and correct the high number of inactive workers hidden behind the contract.

The data offered by Fedea affirm that The proportion of young people under 24 years of age with a discontinuous permanent contract tripled throughout 2022, representing 22% of the total. “This group is characterized by its higher rates of inactivity and termination of contracts due to voluntary abandonment,” said Felgueroso. Behind this statistic there are several unknowns. He think tank considers it essential to have more information and monitoring, to know if the discontinuous fixed contract facilitates incorporation into the labor market or if, on the contrary, is being used to avoid paying higher Social Security contributions with short-term temporary contractsor to exceed the new maximum limit imposed on temporary contracts.

Improve labor reform

This is why Fedea asks the Ministry of Labor for an in-depth evaluation of the behavior of the labor market, and additional measures to correct the imbalances created around these contracts. “In the event that the stock of discontinued permanent workers in inactivity continues to grow, with few short-term calls and a reduced total working time per person, it would be advisable to analyze what type of measures to implement to increase the frequency and duration of calls, with measures such as minimum remuneration during periods of inactivity or the introduction of a bonus-malusthat is, increasing social contributions to companies with relatively high turnover rates and reducing them to companies with relatively low rates,” Florentino Felgueroso proposes in his reasoning.

It is not the only unknown that the document reveals. The entity asks Yolanda Díaz’s team to analyze what the fact that intermittent jobs have indefinite contracts contributes, compared to the previous situation characterized by a succession of temporary contracts.

That is to say, Fedea questions the positive effect of the creation of the discontinuous fixed term, since during its first year in force the ruptures of labor relations grew, and its main cause is the voluntary abandonment of workers who would have stopped receiving compensation for cessation of the temporary contract, which they enjoyed before the approval of the labor reform. “If the employment relationship ends in dismissal, the workers would receive the corresponding compensation, discounting the compensation for recall received during the employment relationship,” requests the Fedea analysis.