The fight to end the big problem of the labor market

BarcelonaIn April 2022, the major labor reform by Yolanda Díaz came into effect. The Minister of Labor promised that the new measures would foster a profound transformation of the Spanish labor market and combat one of its endemic problems: high temporality. Four years later, however, can we say that the initiative has achieved its main objective? According to Jordi Garcia, professor of Labor Law and Social Security at the University of Barcelona, no. "Or at least that's what it seems with the little data they provide," he assures. Different reports, such as one published a few weeks ago by the liberal think tank Fundación Civismo, agree with the expert and say that the changes have been, truly, "statistical".

The key to the project promoted by the leader of Sumar was to limit temporary contracts, restricting their use to much more justified occasions. While until then temporary work and service contracts were very popular, the aim was to replace them with the figure of permanent-discontinuous workers, a type of indefinite contract that already existed, but which was expanded to group previous temporary contracts. This type of employment relationship is based on the fact that the worker has a permanent job, but is called to work or not depending on the company's needs. Historically, they were used, especially, for seasonal or temporary jobs, for example, ski instructors. With the labor reform, they also began to be allowed for intermittent work and for temporary employment agencies (ETT).

The problem of counting them

This change –initially– boosted permanent contracts, raising them to historic highs. But over time, the doubt has arisen as to how many of them are actually workingthe doubt about how many of them are actually working. "Although it has been repeatedly requested to quantify the number of inactive discontinuous permanent workers, the Ministry of Labor has not yet provided the data," explains Jordi Garcia. In fact, the only data that has guided experts so far on how many there might be would be the number of job seekers with an employment relationship, although this would not be reliable either because it includes people who are on ERTE. According to the latest data from the State Public Employment Service (SEPE), in December 2025, the figure would stand at 892,933 workers, compared to 301,316 registered in December 2019, the last quarter before the impact of COVID-19 and the labor reform.

Another controversy about the count falls on employment data. Discontinuous permanent workers, even if they are not working, are not listed as unemployed, although if they have contributed enough they can receive benefits. This has led the opposition to accuse the Spanish government of lying with employment data. For his part, the UB professor also wonders how it can be that "if according to monthly data hundreds of thousands of permanent contracts are made each month" in the long term unemployment does not decrease "in a greater proportion". "How is it possible that we say we are making so many permanent contracts and unemployment, on the other hand, remains at the same percentages?", asks Garcia, who adds: "There is a great lack of transparency".

An endemic problem

The labor law expert expresses the change through an example: "If you used to only work one month a year, for the rest of the months you were considered unemployed; now you can continue to work one month a year, but you are counted as an employee for the entire cycle, even though you only get paid for one." This would have changed the way they are counted, but, as he indicates, it would continue to prolong the problem of intermittent work – although not that of contracts. Even so, Garcia also explains that during the last few months a new increase in temporary contracts has been detected, which had been greatly reduced since the measure was implemented four years ago. "It seems that the trend could begin to reverse again," says the professor.

The concern about the high percentage of temporary contracts, in fact, is long-standing. As Garcia explains, "historically, one of the points that all – or almost all – reforms that have been made to the Workers' Statute have touched upon has been temporary hiring." And, in general, the line of legislators and courts has always been to try to limit temporality by imposing limitations on it, both in its possible causes and in the options for duration or periods.