The December data confirm that – whatever the final increase in GDP is – employment is recovering strongly, what is essential for political and social stability. Last year 776,000 jobs were created, the highest number since 2005, before the great financial crisis. And the number of contributors to Social Security reached 19.82 million, the highest reached in Spain and therefore higher than before the pandemic. In addition, of the 750,000 workers who received the ertes in December 2020 (they reached 3.5 million at the beginning of the pandemic), it has gone to just over 100,000 at the end of the year.
As a consequence, unemployment has fallen by 782,000 people in 2021 and the still very high number of unemployed (3.1 million) is the lowest since December 2007. These are encouraging data that should reinforce somewhat the self-esteem of Spaniards, but They also indicate several relevant things to consider.
One, that the so anatemized 2012 labor reform it has not been an obstacle to a very strong job creation after the coronavirus crisis. It is to be hoped that the corrections now introduced will allow for higher quality employment without damaging the flexibility of the economy.
Two, that the social shield Faced with the crisis erected by the Government and agreed almost entirely with employers and unions -ertes, ICO credits, minimum vital income, minimum wage & mldr; – it has worked satisfactorily.
Three, that what has been achieved has undoubtedly been a success of Spanish society, but that it would have been very difficult – if not impossible – without being in the EU and without the euro. It is the ECB’s low interest rate policy and its purchases of Spanish debt that have allowed it to smoothly finance the large public deficits of 10% and 8.4% of the last two years. Indeed, what our ten-year debt now costs us is 0.36%, when it came close to 7% at the worst moment of the 2012 crisis. A fact not to be forgotten.
Now an average of 69% of Europeans -according to the latest Eurobarometer survey– believes that the euro not only favors Europe, but also benefits his own country. And the valuations are different between the countries, although without abysmal differences and in neither is the euro judged negatively.
The Greeks, who came to vote in a referendum not to accept the conditions of their rescue – a decision that Tsipras later did not apply – believe that the euro is 73% positive for Greece, four points above the average and compared to 76% of Germans.
Those who believe that the euro benefits them the most are the Irish and the Finns (82%) while the Spanish are at 68%, one point below the average, followed by the French (66%) and lastly Luxembourg and Italy (61% and 60%).
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The euro has already become a well-accepted reality because it strengthens the EU and the countries that comprise it. There is this 73% of the Greeks who pulverize Varoufakis and his proclamations of austericide. Y Marine Le Pen It has already rectified and this year it will not advocate, as in the presidential elections of 2017, for France to leave the euro. The most surprising thing is that of Italy, which seems to be overcoming its eternal political and economic crisis with Mario Draghi, who chaired the ECB in 2012, at the head of the Government.
Europe is not a military power comparable to Russia, China or the United States, but it does have the euro, which is the second currency in the world (after the dollar) and which gives it external authority and a lot of internal cohesion.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com