Malaga province creates 10,000 jobs in May while unemployment drops by 2,208

Malaga province's labour market kept growing in May, building on the two previous months' positive momentum with the start of the tourist season and Easter. The province has now seen three consecutive months of adding more than 10,000 people to the Social Security system.

March saw an increase of 14,000 employed individuals; April, 15,000; and May, 10,002, bringing the total to an average of 771,294 registered workers, a new all-time high, according to data from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.

No other province in Andalucía has been able to achieve such a rate of job creation. In fact, across the entire region, the number of new jobs last month totalled 17,529, meaning that Malaga was responsible for more than half of all Andalusian employment in May.

Following Malaga were the province of Cadiz, with 5,677 new workers, and Seville, with 1,878 new employees. Two provinces, Almeria and Huelva, lost jobs: 765 in the former and 1,361 in the latter. They were the only two provinces in all of Spain to experience job losses last month.

In terms of how Malaga compares to the rest of Spain outside of Andalucía, the Balearic Islands ranked ahead in job creation, adding nearly 48,200 jobs, followed by Barcelona (27,448), Madrid (25,082) and Zaragoza (nearly 11,000). Therefore, in absolute terms, Malaga was the fifth province in Spain with the greatest job creation potential.

In relative terms, the increase in employment was 1.31%, which put Malaga above the Spanish average (1.05%, adding nearly 232,000 contributors in May, up to 22.33 million, also a record figure).

Andalucía has added 76,423 people to the Social Security system in the last 12 months, with one in three having found work in Malaga.

The increase in the number of people contributing to Social Security in the province has led to a further decrease in unemployment, which fell by 2,208 people, according to records from the state public employment service. May ended with 102,207 unemployed in the province, its lowest level since 2008 (61,750 women and 40,457 men).

The goal to reduce unemployment below 100,000, something that has not happened in the province since the financial crisis nearly two decades ago, once again has to wait, potentially for the summer months, which usually favour the labour market in coastal areas.

In any case, Malaga was the third province in all of Spain to see a reduction in registered unemployment, after Barcelona (-4,821) and Madrid (-3,834). Of course, it was the first in Andalucía, although in this case unemployment fell in all provinces in the region.

In relative terms, the decrease in unemployment in Malaga last month was 2.11%, compared to the 1.54% reduction at the national level (it fell by 36,323 people, to 2.32 million).

In the last 12 months, unemployment in the province has fallen by 9.21%, or 10,365 people, while in the country as a whole the decline has been 5.5%, which in absolute terms means that at the end of May there were 134,162 fewer unemployed than 12 months ago.

If the analysis focuses on the last month, the bulk of the decrease in unemployment in the province of Malaga occurred in the services sector, where the number of unemployed fell by 1,730.

In other economic activities, the reduction was much more modest, with 113 fewer unemployed in industry; 83 fewer in construction; and 41 fewer in agriculture. The number of unemployed without previous work experience fell by 241.

The sector that concentrates the largest part of the unemployed is the services sector, with 74,437; followed by construction (9,721); industry (4,413); and agriculture (2,233).

As for hiring, in May a total of 50,238 contracts were signed in the province of Malaga, of which just over 24,000 were permanent and 26,215 were temporary.