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The province has more people working than ever before and unemployment is at its lowest level since 2007. Ñito Salas
Malaga province sits in top spot in Spain for cutting unemployment in last 12 months
Employment

Malaga province sits in top spot in Spain for cutting unemployment in last 12 months

EEmployment numbers have hit a new all-time high with more than 775,000 workers and unemployment falls by 35,000 people, leaving the rate at 12.06%, the lowest level since 2007

Nuria Triguero

Malaga

Monday, 28 October 2024, 17:23

Malaga is the Spanish province in which the most people have come out of unemployment in the last year. Data from Spain's latest labour force survey (EPA) for the third quarter reveals a total of 34,500 fewer unemployed in the province than in the same period of 2023. With this significant drop (the most intense in Spain in absolute terms), Malaga is one step away from breaking the curse of 100,000 unemployed: this barrier has been impossible to break since it was first surpassed in 2008. At the moment, according to the EPA, the province has 106,400 unemployed and its unemployment rate stands at 12.06%, the lowest level since 2007. The employment rate (that is, the percentage of the population over the age of 16 in work) is also at its highest level since that year at 51.35%.

With this significant drop in unemployment Malaga has managed to converge with the national average (it is already just over one point above the national average), thereby moving away from the Andalusian average, which remains anchored in hard at 16.06% with some provinces such as Granada and Jaen above 20%. This drop also represents a change in the jobs trend, since Malaga has been creating jobs at a strong pace since the end of the pandemic, but until now it had not managed to reduce unemployment substantially due to the continuous growth of the active population (those of working age). What has happened in the last 12 months is that employment has continued to increase vigorously (there are 40,600 more Malaga residents working than a year ago, which is the third largest increase in the country after Madrid and Barcelona) and, at the same time, the active population has grown by only 5,700 people.

Focusing only on the third quarter (summer), Malaga slowed down its rate of job creation, adding only 3,700 new jobs compared with the previous quarter. However, this has to be looked at in context, as Malaga had just created no less than 50,000 jobs in the second quarter - a record-breaker. In this way, it can be interpreted that the job creation that is usually recorded in the high season was brought forward to the spring. Unemployment fell by 4,800 between the second and third quarters and the labour force also fell by around 1,000 people.

Where is employment being created?

Where is employment growing? If we make comparisons between the second quarter of 2023 and 2024, there is an increase of about 18,000 workers in the service sector, 15,500 in construction, 5,200 in industry and 1,500 in agriculture. At the moment, the employment pie in Malaga province has a huge slice in services (83%) and the rest is divided between the other sectors (9.3% in construction, 5.1% in industry and 2.7% in agriculture).

The inactive population is also growing

All this is taking place in a context of population growth, as Malaga is one of the most dynamic provinces, not only in terms of employment, but also demographically. The EPA shows that Malaga has added almost 23,000 inhabitants in the last year. So, just as the active and employed population is growing, so is the inactive population: those who, for one reason or another, are not in a position to work. This group includes pensioners (these number 312,000 after an increase of 10,000 in the last 12 months), students (119,300, also 10,000 more in just one year), stay-at-homes (around 150,000, this number has increased slightly by some 3,000 people), the permanently disabled (some 38,000), as well as 10,000 Malaga residents in "other situations of inactivity" that have not been specified.

Reactions from interested parties

The executive vice-president and general secretary of the CEM confederation of employers of Malaga, Natalia Sánchez, valued this data "as good results, which reflect, on the one hand, the impact of the summer, as usual, around the most intense part of the tourist season, but also the positive progression that continues to place us in record figures, both in job creation and in the reduction of unemployment."

She added: "we are moving towards an increasingly closer objective: to converge with the national unemployment rate and to fall below double digits; doing so, moreover, in parallel with the constant increase in our active population, which means an extra effort for the generation of jobs."

Sánchez pointed out that the goal now "should not only focus on continuing to generate employment, but also have an impact on the groups that find it most difficult to access jobs: young people and the over-45s, as well as women, whose unemployment rate exceeds that of men by more than five percentage points." To this end, she insists that "it is necessary to strengthen active employment policies, continuous training and, of course, incentives for companies to hire."

Turning to the opinions of two major trade unions, María José Prados, as CCOO's employment secretary for Malaga, said that these "good employment figures must be accompanied by public policies to alleviate the main problems that working people in the province continue to suffer, such as job insecurity in certain sectors and the difficulty of accessing affordable housing."

Likewise, the secretary for employment and training for the UGT unionin Malaga, Luisa Domínguez, is critical of the excessive concentration of employment in the services sector. "We are once again demanding that the investment effort be diversified in a more equitable way among all sectors of the economy, because we are convinced that the excessive dependence of the labour market on a sector that can behave in a fluctuating way in the short, medium or long term must be reduced. And this attention must be focused on policies that ensure this diversification, which in the long run is the most positive thing for workers, especially in industry (an almost forgotten sector), agriculture (which has great potential), construction, and all those services that are necessary: health, education, care, in general all activities aimed at serving the community."

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