Years ago, a governor of the Bank of Spain confessed to me that one of the things that embarrassed him the most was to review the table of indicators that the weekly ‘The Economist’ publishes each week on its last page. In the unemployment data, Spain always had the red lantern and I was uneasy to imagine what the other governors would think when they saw our unemployment figures. We were the worst of the worst.
Spain had a good evolution of employment last year and 782,000 fewer unemployed, the largest drop in unemployment in our history. But if the current governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, keeps looking at the painting of ‘The Economist’, he will also feel ashamed. True, in 2013 –in the depths of the financial crisis– we got to have an unemployment rate of 27%, and now the November figures from Eurostat –the latest European ones available– say that unemployment in Spain is at 14.1%. It is an indisputable improvement, but we are still the red lantern of Europe – the worst of the worst – because we have the highest percentage of unemployment and We doubled 7.2% on average for the euro zone. Behind we have Greece, with 13.4%, and Italy, with 9.2%. And we are light years away from the 3.2% of Germany or 2.8% of the “austericide & rdquor; Holland.
Comparing with other European countries the annual evolution does not satisfy either. In Spain we have gone from unemployment of 16.2% to 14.1% between November 2020 and the same month of 2021, while in the euro zone they have dropped from 8.1% to 7.2%.
And the same It is worth mentioning the youth unemployment (from 18 to 25 years old), where our unemployment rate is at 29.2% compared to a euro zone average of 15.6% (6% in the Netherlands and Germany). But now Greece surpasses us in youth unemployment, with 39.1%, and there is another figure that inspires optimism. In the euro zone, youth unemployment has fallen 2.4 points, from 18% a year ago, while in Spain the decrease was 11 points, from 40.3%. It seems that in youth unemployment the evolution is better and it’s the first time in many years in which youth unemployment is below 30%.
Since the 2008 crisis, with the 2012 labor reform and despite the pandemic, we have improved, but We must not forget that we continue to hold the red lantern. Now, with “the correction & rdquor; (as Pedro Sánchez has ended up qualifying) of the 2012 labor reform, we want to combat high precariousness and temporary employment. And with the increases in the minimum wage, excessive inequality. They are goals that are difficult not to share, but we must not forget the sad reality of our unemployment figures.
That is why it is difficult to understand that when the Government, the CEOE and the two main unions They have reached an agreement on the labor reform that seemed impossible – and that surely implies many resignations and mistakes – the validation of the decree-law is generating so much noise. Now it turns out that some left-wing allies of the government they do not renounce to give lessons of workerism to UGT and CCOO. And the PP even denies abstention despite the signing of the CEOE since those who made the 2012 reform (Minister Fátima Báñez and Rajoy) believe that the agreement is acceptable.
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Unions they must not know what is good for the workers. Entrepreneurs must have had their brains sucked into the Frankenstein government. And Sánchez does not want to telephone Casado, he prefers to communicate with him through the microphones of the SER or Let Félix Bolaños, the firefighter minister, speak with García Egea.
Now we will show two red lanterns, the unemployment and the lack of common sense?
Reference-www.elperiodico.com