La Seguridad Social registra 551.000 afiliados más en el último año y se sitúa en niveles históricos por encima de los 20,9 millones en febrero

The Social Security registered 20,954,785 affiliated workers in February, discounting the seasonality and the calendar effect. It is the best data of the historical series, after having added 551,359 workers in the last year, in line with the average job creation in the years before the pandemic, 2015 to 2019. Membership has grown by nearly 1.6 million workers since before the pandemic.

Compared to the previous month, there are 73,492 more Social Security members. It is the biggest increase in a month of February in the series.

For its part, the average affiliation figure (the original series) is at historical levels for a month of February, with 20,708,382 affiliates. There are 103,621 more jobs than in January, the biggest increase in a month of February since 2007. The year-on-year growth in average membership has been 2.7%, with 538,239 workers more than a year ago.

The sectors that have grown the most in monthly terms in the General Regime are Hospitality, with 29,230 more members, followed by Education, with 28,941 more, Construction, with 18,189 more, and Manufacturing Industry, with 13,130 more. On the contrary, the activities that lose the most affiliates are Health Activities and Social Services and Commerce, with 10,252 and 9,590 less affiliates, respectively.

“In February, we again recorded historically high levels, with an even greater dynamism than the previous months, and we see the structural change that labor reform has entailed,” said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz. “We continue to take steps to reduce the gender gap in the labor market. Women occupy 47.3% of jobs and in 40% of the provinces this percentage is even higher”, he added.

In the daily series, the affiliation exceeded 20.7 million between the 13th and 28th of February.

Higher employment growth than the other large economies

Compared to the pre-pandemic level (December 2019), affiliation has grown by almost 1.6 million people in seasonally adjusted terms. In addition, job creation in Spain (+8.1%) exceeds that of the large European countries (France, +5%; Italy +2.9%; Germany, +1.4%) 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

The good performance of employment is more accentuated among women. In February, 9,787,193 members were registered, 300,623 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 (54.52%). 
 

Currently, women account for 47.3% of all workers, maintaining historically high levels. In 40 per cent of the provinces, this rate is even higher.

Since the pre-pandemic level, women’s membership has grown by 11.8% compared to the 7.7% increase in male employment and by 6.2% in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (compared to the 1.1% increase among men).

The improvement in employment among women is also reflected in their contribution bases, which have increased by 16%, that is, 2.8 points more than those of men, which grow by 13.2% compared to the level prior to the pandemic.

If we analyze the evolution of employment by type of contract, we also highlight the increase in indefinite employment among women, 5.7% in the last year, higher than that of men (4.9%).

In addition, the employment of young people is growing above the average. From the pre-pandemic level, Social Security membership for children under 30 years of age has increased by 14.8%, or 5.2 percentage points above the average increase.

High added value

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 26.3%, or Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities, which has a growth of 16.6%. Since the end of the pandemic, more than one in five new affiliates (329,000 in absolute terms) have joined these two highly productive sectors.

More than 3.1 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 3.1 million more affiliates (3,176,998) with an indefinite contract than in December 2021, the last month before the reform’s entry into force.

In addition, in February, 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 is 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 noted in the evolution of the affiliates with undefined full-time contracts in the last year, which grow with greater intensity (5.2% year-on-year, which is 467,034 more) than those of part-time (5.1%, which is 117,628), while the discontinuous fixed ones are reduced (-0.2%, which is -1,419).

Finally, 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.

Additional information in Excel and on the web:
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