La afiliación a la Seguridad Social crece en diciembre y suma más de 530.000 empleos en 2023, con niveles máximos de mujeres ocupadas

Social Security ended the year with 20,774,625 workers registered in December, discounting seasonality and the calendar effect. It is the best data of the historical series, after having added 533,731 workers throughout 2023. The increase in the year as a whole exceeds that of 2022, an exercise with great dynamism in job creation. The sum of 2022 and 2023 represents one million more members.

Compared to the month of November, the increase in December is 23,287 members of Social Security.

Meanwhile, the average membership figure remains at historic levels, with 20,836,010 members, the highest in the original series in a month of December. In the daily series, membership has remained above 20.8 million workers on an ongoing basis between December 1 and 21. As of November, 29,937 more affiliates have registered. The year-on-year growth in affiliation was 2.7%, with 539,740 workers more than in December 2022.

The good progress of the year is rounded off by the growth in the number of women working: there are already more than 9,850,000 contributors, 300,000 more than in December 2022, and they account for 47.3% of all workers.

“The labour market has performed exceptionally well in 2023, with a further increase in employment in December. Particularly noteworthy is the increase in employment among women, 55% of the employment created last year is female”, said the Minister of Social Security, Inclusion and Migration, Elma Saiz. “Throughout the year, every month has been recorded a historical peak of the series. Spain is showing a commendable resilience capability,” he adds. “2023 has been a historic year in job creation from every perspective that consolidates the structural change of our labor market. A year of more employment, of higher quality. For more young people and more women, in more qualified sectors and with less temporality”.

Higher employment growth than the other large economies

Compared to the pre-pandemic level (December 2019), affiliation has grown by more than 1.4 million people in seasonally adjusted terms. In addition, compared to the level before the pandemic, job creation in Spain (+7.2%) exceeds that of the large European countries (France, +5.1%; Germany, +1.4%). 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 5.4%, 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 3 points more than that of men in the January-December average. In year-on-year terms, female affiliation increases by 3.1%, 0.9 points more than that of men and, as a result, there are more than 9.8 million women working. In December, 9,856,258 female affiliates were registered, 47.3% of the total, which is the maximum in the series.

The employment of young people is also growing above the average. Since the pre-pandemic level, Social Security membership for children under 30 years of age has increased by 10.8%, 3.7 percentage points more than the average growth rate.

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 25.2%, or Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities, which has a growth of 15.8%. Since the end of the pandemic, one in five new affiliates (314,000 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 more than 3.1 million more affiliates (3,113,643) with an indefinite contract than in December 2021, the last month before the reform’s entry into force.

In addition, in December, the percentage of affiliates with an indefinite contract stands at 86%, its historical maximum, growing 16 points since the labor reform. Thus, the rate of temporality remains at a minimum (14%). In the case of children under 30 years of age, the reduction in the level of temporality is more intense, falling by 31 percentage points (from 53% to 22%) compared to the level it had before the reform.

The effects of labor reform are also noted in the evolution of undefined full-time contracts throughout the year, which grow more intensely (5.5% on average in 2023) than part-time contracts (5.2%) and discontinuous fixed contracts (3.7%).

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%. Finally, the improvement in employment also boosts the contributor to pensioner ratio, which stands at 2.42, the highest in the decade.

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