Santander (EFE) the last quarter of the year, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) published this Thursday.
The regional government has highlighted that Cantabria is the third community with the greatest stability in employment and the fifth with the greatest drop in unemployment in 2022, while the unions have agreed that the INE data show a decline in employment and opposition He has used them as an argument to criticize the policies of the autonomous Executive.
The final balance for the year places the number of unemployed at 28,100. They are 3,500 less than in December 2021 but 4,200 more than in September 2022.
The same tonic followed employment. The region closed the year with 1,700 more employed than in 2021 despite the slowdown in the last three months, in which employment fell by 10,600 people, with which the final figure stood at 244,000 workers.
Although in the global computation of the year, Cantabria fared better than the average in unemployment, with a fall of 10.77 percent compared to the national 2.57, in employment it fared worse. In the region it increased by 0.71 and on average in Spain, by 1.38.
Regarding the third quarter, the community was the second with the highest increase in unemployment, after the Balearic Islands and only in this autonomy and in Melilla the occupation fell more compared to September.
THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AT 10.34%
According to the EPA, Cantabria ended the year with an unemployment rate of 10.34 percent compared to a national rate of 12.87.
It is the sixth lowest among the communities, after La Rioja (8.60), the Basque Country (8.66), Castilla y León (8.83), Aragón (9.41) and Catalonia (9.91).
The activity rate in the region was more than four points below the national rate: 54.26 percent compared to 58.52 in the country as a whole.
And while the unemployment rate among men is 8.11 percent among women it stands at 12.79.
The data also reflect an outstanding difference in the activity rate by sex, of more than eight points: in men it is 58.75 percent and in women, 50.04 percent.
In absolute figures, of the 244,000 employed persons collected by the EPA for the fourth quarter, 131,000 are men and 113,000 women.
And of 28,100 unemployed, 16,600 are women compared to 11,600 men.
MORE PERMANENT CONTRACTS
The Vice President of Cantabria, Pablo Zuloaga, has highlighted, in his assessment of the EPA, that the unemployment rate is still below the national average and that in the region there are 16,000 more people with permanent contracts than a year ago.
Another positive fact that the Government has highlighted is that the number of households with all their members unemployed has fallen, from 12,700 in 2021 to 9,800 in 2022.
On a negative note, he has indicated that partial employment “has a woman’s name”, which translates into “less future rights and fewer benefits.” And it is that the partial employment rate is 4.4% for men, while for women it stands at 19.2%
A SEASONAL MODEL
UGT has warned that Cantabria has been losing jobs since 2007 due to a seasonal production model, excessively dependent on services and a labor market that “always deflates at the end of the year”, as confirmed again, according to the union, by data from the EPA.
The CCOO has stressed that the effects of the labor reform are having an impact on the improvement of the labor market, with “more permanent contracts and more full-time hours” compared to 2021, despite the fact that the last quarter of last year has registered a setback on the “positive path” in Cantabria.
For USO, the data show “in evidence” the economic decline in Cantabria with a “growing dependence” on the service sector due to seasonal tourism.
LESS ACTIVE POPULATION
The PP has regretted that Cantabria is the second autonomous community in Spain in which the active population decreases while it grows in the rest of the country, which means that “more people of working age have lost hope of finding a job” in the region.
Ciudadanos (Cs) has called employment policies in Cantabria an “indisputable failure” after analyzing the latest data from the fourth quarter of the Active Population Survey (EPA), which they believe also show an “economic slowdown.”
And, according to Vox, the data shows that “there are fewer and fewer people willing to work” in the region, because “they go abroad in search of a future that they will not find here.”
