La afiliación a la Seguridad Social crece en 544.000 ocupados en los últimos doce meses

Social Security records 20,881,293 affiliated workers in January, discounting seasonality and the calendar effect. It is the best data of the historical series, after having added 544,524 workers in the last year. Membership has grown by about 1.5 million workers since before the pandemic.

Compared to the month of December, the increase in January is 38,357 members of Social Security.

For its part, the average membership figure remains at historic levels for one month of January, with 20,604,761 members. It is the highest figure of the original series in the first month of the year, despite being 231,250 less occupied than in December. The year-on-year growth of the average affiliation was 2.6%, with 523,537 workers more than in January 2023.

The good progress of employment is rounded off by the growth in the number of women working: 9,736,376 contributors, almost 300,000 more than in January 2023. They account for 47.3% of all workers.

“Quantity and quality in job creation remain one of the main characteristics of the structural change that is consolidated in our labor market. This behavior is especially noteworthy among women,” said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz. “There are more women than ever working and their contribution bases are growing more than those of men. In this way we advance in the reduction of the gender gap”, he added.

Higher employment growth than the other large economies

Compared to the pre-pandemic level (December 2019), affiliation has grown by more than 1.5 million people in seasonally adjusted terms. In addition, job creation in Spain (+7.9%) exceeds that of the large European countries (France, +4.8%; Germany, +1.3%) compared to that level before the pandemic. The increase in employment is also more prominent than in these countries since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a period in which in Spain it has grown by 5.9%, while in France and Germany there are increases of less than 2%.

New historic record of female employment

On the other hand, compared to the level before the pandemic, female employment also shows a special dynamism, since it grows 4 points more than that of men in the January-December average. In particular, 11.7% did so, compared to the 7.6% that increases the male occupation. This improvement is also reflected in the evolution of the contribution bases: those of women grow by 16%.

In year-on-year terms, female affiliation increases by 3.1%, 0.95 points more than that of men and, as a result, there are more than 9.7 million women working. In January, an average of 9,736,379 female affiliates were registered, 47.3% of the total, which is the maximum in the series.

If we analyze the evolution of employment by type of contract, we also highlight the increase in indefinite employment among women, 5.9% in the last year, higher than that of men (5%).

In addition, the employment of young people is growing above the average. Since the pre-pandemic level, Social Security membership for children under 30 years of age has increased by 14.5%, five percentage points above the average increase. This growth is accentuated in sectors of high added value such as Informatics and Communications (51%), and Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities and Health Activities that grow, respectively, 33.3% and 30.9%.

The growth of affiliation compared to the level prior to the pandemic is especially intense in sectors of high added value such as Informatics and Telecommunications, whose number of affiliates has increased by 25.9%, or Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities, which has a growth of 16.5%. Since the end of the pandemic, one in five new affiliates (325,000 in absolute terms) have joined these two highly productive sectors.

More than 3.1 million new indefinite affiliates and minimum of temporality

Almost 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 nearly 3.1 million more affiliates (3,051,345) with an indefinite contract than in December 2021, the last month before the reform’s entry into force.

In addition, in January, the percentage of affiliates with an indefinite contract stands at 87%, its historical maximum, growing 17 points since the labor reform. Thus, the rate of temporality is at a minimum (13%). In the case of children under 30 years of age, the reduction in the level of temporality is more intense, falling by 33 percentage points (from 53% to 20%) compared to the level it had before the reform.

The effects of the labor reform are also noted in the evolution of the affiliates with indefinite full-time contracts throughout the year, which grow more intensively (5.3% year-on-year) than those of part-time (4.9%) and that the fixed discontinuous (1.7%).

On the other hand, the number of workers in ERTE remains at minimum levels, in the area of 11,000, which represents less than 0.1% of the total number of affiliates.

Significant improvement in Social Security income

The strong dynamism of the labor market and the increase in the quality of employment is contributing to reinforce the sustainability of the pension system, so that the income from social contributions has registered until November (last month with available data) a growth of 10.3%. If the effect of income from the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism (MEI), which began to be applied in January 2023, is discounted, the contributions grow at a rate of 8.3%.

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