Work reveals that there were 45,500 discontinuous permanent workers unemployed at the end of 2022

The Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy, Joaquín Pérez Rey, revealed this Tuesday that, according to the microdata requested by the Ministry of Labor from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the total number of permanent-discontinuous workers collected by the Survey of Active Population (EPA) at the end of 2022 was 594,200, of which only 45,500 were considered unemployed by the agency.

During his appearance at the Senate Labor Commission, which began with a minute’s silence for the victims of work accidents, Pérez Rey wanted to put an end to the “myth” that the Ministry is “dressing up” the unemployment figures, such and as denounced by the PP. The Secretary of State has highlighted that the 594,000 permanent-discontinuous workers accounted for in the EPA for the fourth quarter of 2022 they only account for 3.4% of the total wage earners and 2.9% of the total employed, which amounts to more than 20.46 million people.

Pérez Rey has defended that the Government of Pedro Sánchez is calculating unemployment the same as 38 years ago, when the order was issued that determined how registered unemployment should be measured in employment offices.” With this order, González, Aznar, has measured unemployment , Rodríguez Zapatero, Rajoy and now Pedro Sánchez. All we do is scrupulously comply with statistical rigor and we limit ourselves to giving the data provided by the autonomous communities”, Pérez Rey pointed out.

In this sense, he has indicated that in 2013, when the PP governed, registered unemployment was 5.2 million people and unemployment collected by the EPA, 6.2 million. That year, job seekers with an employment relationship (not unemployed) reached 1.5 million people212,226 of them fixed-discontinuous, but the ‘popular’ Government did not count them within the registered unemployment.

“So, the registered unemployment in 2013 that the PP government made public, was it 5.2 million or 6.7 million? Did Mrs. Fátima Báñez come to make up the figures to eliminate those 1.5 million? Shall we upload it to 6.7 million so that you are even more champions of unemployment?”, Pérez Rey asked the PP senator, María Teresa Ruiz-Sillero, who had previously accused him of “dressing up” the unemployment data for not counting to the fixed-discontinuous ones.

The Secretary of State has also resorted to the February unemployment data published by the Government of Andalusia to deny the accusations of “make-up” by the ‘popular’. Thus, he has pointed out that the registered unemployment reported in February by the Executive of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, of the PP, reached 746,000 unemployed and the number of job seekers with an employment relationship exceeded 467,000 people. “Does Andalusia then have half a million more registered unemployed than what Mr. Moreno Bonilla tells me?” He insisted.

But Pérez Rey has given even more data, making use of the historical series of the Ministry of Labor. In 2005, when the series began, there were 48,557 fixed-intermittent unemployed, a figure that in 2012 rose to 212,240. “Do you remember who governed in 2012?”, he asked the ‘popular’ senator.

5,000 fixed-discontinuous more than before the reform

Before the labor reform, in 2020 and 2021, the number of fixed-discontinuous workers was around 320,000 people, and in 2022, with the labor reform already operational, the average will be around 325,000 people, with which permanent-discontinuous workers ” barely” have risen by 5,000 people compared to the period prior to the labor market reform, he highlighted.

“They are people who have a job and are not counted as unemployed unless they are actively looking for a job. When you are going to be called in the next campaign, you are not actively looking for a job because you have a job. We limit ourselves to complying with the law and we are very proud that today they can have stable labor relations and protected against unemployment, not only Spaniards, but also foreigners hired at source”, Pérez Rey assured.

The Secretary of State has accused the PP of “aligning itself with the foundations that finance the Ibex to harm the Government by creating a new accounting” and has asked it to “reconsider” and “not question” official statistics that governments of different sign They have been using it since the 80’s.

“When a model of labor relations is altered and it gives results, patriotism is trying to encourage it to go even better. Patriotism, loving your country, would consist, instead of inventing a parallel accounting, is to see how it could be improved even more” , Pérez Rey has abounded. The Secretary of State has indicated that the fixed-discontinuous they were formerly used as “throw away workers” And now, thanks to the 2021 labor reform, they are guaranteed continuity in the campaigns.