The Government commits to creating 900,000 jobs between 2024 and 2025 and reducing unemployment to below 11%
The Government is convinced that the strong job creation figures seen after the end of the pandemic will continue for at least two more years. Thus, the forecasts managed by the Ministry of Economy led by Carlos Body suggest that the national economy will incorporate about 900,000 new jobs between 2024 and 2025.
From them, 507,000 will be generated this year and 368,000 next year, as calculated by the Executive. So far this year, Social Security has already added 230,000 affiliates in seasonally adjusted terms, slightly less than half of the target set for 2024.
These increases in employment expected by the Government would allow reduce the unemployment rate to 10.7% by the end of next year. A decrease of 1.4 percentage points compared to the closing level of 2023, but which would leave the level of unemployment still very far from the figures presented by most European countries.
Furthermore, it would imply standing at the theoretical halfway point of the legislature with a unemployment rate still far from the target of 8% that the PSOE marked in the campaign of the last general elections. It is striking how, while job creation is expected to increase by 4.1 percentage points until 2025, the unemployment rate would reduce only 1.4 points. The reason is that an important part of those jobs that will be created will not be filled by the unemployed, but by people who are not in the labor market right now, such as foreign workers.
“Balanced, robust and differential” growth
The minister presented these calculations, which are part of the Stability Program that Spain sent to Brussels a few days ago, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers. In it, the Body has made a diagnosis of the state of the Spanish economy today.
The director of the country’s economic policy has defended that Spain has a growth pattern “balanced, robust and differential” compared to the main European partners. A growth that has also been maintained in the first three months of the year, in which the GDP recorded an increase of 0.7% compared to the end of 2023.
With this backdrop, The Government expects the Spanish economy to grow 2% this year and 1.9% the nexte, as estimated by the ministry’s technicians. Forecasts that are in line with those of the major international analysts for this two-year period and that place Spain on a growth path higher than that of the large economies of the EU.
Of course, with an important nuance: the GDP per capitathe indicator that best reflects how this growth is being distributed in the population, It is only 0.3% above the level it marked before the pandemic. A fact that reflects that the notable growth obtained in these years has been generated fundamentally by incorporating more labor into the economy, not from a gain in efficiency.
