Article published by José Alberto León Alonso in El Día on 12/06/15.
The unemployed registered in the Canary Islands in the INEM in the month of November 2015 amounted to 248,639 people, with an increase of 1,477 people compared to the previous month and 16,746 people compared to November 2014. Despite the media importance that is erroneously given to it, the registered unemployment statistic is not very relevant for the analysis of the economic situation, since in practice not all Those seeking work register in employment offices, since public employment agencies hardly participate in the placement of the unemployed, nor do all those registered actively seek employment, since some work in the underground economy and others seek another series of social benefits that require registration.
The variation in the number of Social Security affiliates is relevant to verify the evolution of our labor market. The number of affiliates in the month of November 2015 in the Canary Islands increased by 4,063 people compared to the previous month, and by 23,850 people compared to the month of November 2014, reaching the figure of 710,528 affiliates. It is a positive fact, although this quarter is traditionally good for employment in the Canary Islands, with the start of the high season in the tourism sector and, in December, the Christmas campaign in commerce.
To avoid seasonal effects, it is best to resort to interannual comparisons, that is, with the same month of the previous year. If we do so, we observe that the interannual growth rate in the number of social security affiliates in our archipelago is reduced to 3.47%, when in October this rate was 3.67% and in September it was 4.27%. In fact, the employment growth rate begins to decline from the peak reached in May (4.51%) to the current one, although it is still a higher job creation rate than the Spanish one (3.16%), which remains stable. This decreasing path is clearly visible in the quarterly graph that accompanies these lines.
In Spain as a whole, Social Security contributions have increased by 1,620 people in November. In that month, Social Security affiliates amounted to 17,223,086, 3.16% more than in the same month last year. In seasonally adjusted terms, those that eliminate distortions in the work calendar, those registered in Social Security increase by 59,600 people compared to the previous month. November is a seasonally bad month for employment and the economy nationwide, so the fact that affiliates still grow is good news. In fact, it is the second consecutive year in which membership has increased in the month of November. With sporadic negative data, it seems that the rate of job creation is stabilizing between 3.16% and 3.19% year-on-year, since there have already been four consecutive months in which Security affiliation has increased between those percentages, which are not bad, which indicates that we have entered a stage of stabilization with a high rate of job creation. In November the interannual growth rate increases in industry, where it goes from 2.6% to 2.7%, and in agriculture, 1.3% instead of 0.7%. But it is reduced in services from 3.4% to 3.3%, and in construction, from 4.3% to 4.2%. Minor changes, all of them. With these data, Social Security has gained 527,335 contributors in the last twelve months.
As a balance of the legislature, now that it is ending, the number of members has been reduced by 25,444 people (-0.15%) between November 2011 (17,248,530) and the same month of 2015 (17,223,086). Practically the same. Of course, our statisticians make sure to complicate the lives of economic analysts by modifying the accounting methodology from time to time. In this legislature, for example, “dependent members” have been excluded from the affiliation statistics, that is, non-professional caregivers for the Dependency benefit (some 159,000 members who were discounted in 2012) and the inactive agricultural workers, some 78,000, who do not contribute to Social Security and who are now excluded from the statistics and were not then. So, in homogeneous terms, we could conclude that during the legislature some 210,000 net jobs have been created.
