Business association warns Spain will not see job growth until June

SPAIN will not see job growth until June, warns temporary work and employment agency business association Asempleo.

The association predicts that mid-May will be the starting point for the economic recovery from the hammer blow dealt by the coronavirus health crisis.

In March alone, there was a historic plummet of nearly 900,000 in contributors to Social Security and a 302,000 increase in the jobless figure following the implementation of the State of Alarm.

Asempleo president Andreu Cruañas said that in his opinion “the speed with which in only 15 days the number of people contributing to Social Security fell again shows the fragility of the part of employment and the extreme sensitivity to disturbances in the normal functioning of activity.”

Cruañas forecast that April will be a terrible month given the “maintenance of restrictive conditions on the freedom of movement and the serious impediments to both offer and demand.”

He referred to what he described as “the intense destruction of employment which the economy is going to suffer as a consequence of the hibernation which the health response to the pandemic requires.”

He also pointed to the negative effects of ERTEs, or temporary employment regulations – a mechanism which allows companies to suspend job contracts or to reduce employee working hours due to force majeure in order to relieve financial tension – saying they could impact on as many as three million workers overall.

Looking further ahead, Asempleo believes the labour market will stabilise in May as economic activity gradually moves back to normality, but says Spain will have to wait until the following month to see the number of jobs rise.