España alcanza por primera vez en la historia los 21 millones de afiliados a la Seguridad Social

The Social Security registered 21,032,661 affiliated workers in March, discounting the seasonality and the calendar effect. It is the best data of the historical series, having added 530,843 in the last year, in line with the average job creation in the years before the pandemic, from 2015 to 2019. Compared to the previous month, there are 77,876 more Social Security affiliates.

Affiliation has added more than 1.6 million workers since before the pandemic

For its part, the average membership figure (the original series) is at record levels, with 20,901,967 members. There are 193,585 more jobs than in February, an increase much higher than the average for the years 2017 to 2019, which was 150,000 jobs. The year-on-year growth in average membership has been 2.6%, with 525,414 workers more than a year ago.

“In March, the affiliation marks historical records and the structural change that labor reform has entailed is accentuated, with a boost to jobs in the sectors with higher quality,” said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz. “The number of women members is the highest in the series, with almost 10 million women working, 47.35% of the total,” he added.

In the last month, the sector that has grown the most in the General Regime is Hospitality, with 81,151 more affiliates, 6.1%. It is followed by Commerce, with 13,643, and Education, with 11,744 more. All sectors of the General Regime are growing or remaining stable.

The daily membership has remained above 20.9 million workers since March 14 and exceeded 21 million for the first time on March 25.
Higher employment growth than the other large economies

Compared to the pre-pandemic level (December 2019), affiliation has grown by more than 1.6 million people in seasonally adjusted terms. In addition, job creation in Spain (+8.3%) exceeds that of the large European countries (France, +5%; Italy +2.9%; Germany, +1.5%) compared to that level before the pandemic.

The increase in employment is more prominent than in these countries also since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, in Spain it has grown by 6.3%, while in France and Germany there are increases of close to 2% in this period.

9.9 million women working

The good performance of employment is more pronounced among women. In March, 9,896,150 members were registered, 297,948 more than in the same month of 2023, which means that more than half of the employment created in the last year corresponds to women (56.7%).

The growth of female employment is 11.8% since the year before the pandemic and exceeds by 4.1 points the increase produced among men, which is 7.7%. In this way, the gap in the labor market is closing. Currently, women account for 47.35% of all workers, which is the highest level in the series.

In the Special System of Self-Employed Workers, female affiliation has increased by 6.2%, compared to 1.2% of male employment growth, and already accounts for 36.8% of the total.

High added value

The increase in affiliation compared to the pre-pandemic level is especially intense in sectors with high added value, such as Information and Communication and Professional, scientific and technical activities. These sectors show growth in excess of 16% compared to the pre-pandemic situation. In fact, more than 1 in 5 affiliates have joined these two sectors since then.

These are activities with greater stability and quality of employment. The weight of undefined full-time contracts exceeds 85% in the case of Information and Communication and 75% in Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities. In return, the levels of temporality fall even more than in the rest of the sections, up to 5% in the case of Information and Communication and 7.5% in Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities. They also have higher salaries and, therefore, higher contribution bases. Specifically, in the Information and Communication sector, these bases are 36% higher than in all sectors, and 15% in Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities.

More than 3.3 million new indefinite affiliates and minimum of temporality

Two years after the entry into force of the labour reform, its positive effects on the stabilization of employment and the improvement of its quality are accentuated. Overall, there are now more than 3.3 million affiliates (3,329,793) with an indefinite contract than in December 2021, the last month before the reform’s entry into force. 

 

In addition, in March, the percentage of affiliates with an indefinite contract stood at 87.3%, its historical maximum, growing 17.3 points since the labor reform. Thus, the rate of temporality remains at historical lows (12.7%). In the case of children under 30 years of age, the reduction in the level of temporality is more intense, falling by 33.6 percentage points (from 53% to 19.4%) compared to the level it had before the reform.

The effects of the labor reform are also perceived in the evolution of the affiliates with undefined full-time contracts in the last year, which grow with greater intensity (4.7% year-on-year, which is 429,645 more) than those of part-time (4.4%, which is 103,490) and than the discontinuous fixed ones (2.1%, which is 18,174).

Finally, the number of workers in ERTE remains at minimum levels, around 11,600, less than 0.1% of the total number of affiliates.

Additional information in Excel and on the web:
https://w6.seg-social.es/PXWeb/pxweb/es