Workers with two jobs 'counted twice' in employment statistics, potentially raising jobless percentage
Thursday, July 24, 2014 @ 5:23 PM
EMPLOYMENT statistics released by the Social Security office are based on numbers of job contracts rather than of people in work, the central government has admitted.
This means anyone who has more than one job – a common situation in Spain and particularly in areas living off tourism, where hours are more likely to be part-time – is counted twice or even more.
As a result, the actual percentage of jobseekers could be higher, since if people in work were totalled up rather than the number of employment contracts, the number of those with jobs would go down and so would the ratio of employees to people on the dole.
When counting up numbers of jobs on the Social Security database, the government does not take into account those on the 'special systems' set up for farmers or domestic workers, nor those who have taken partial early retirement and combine a percentage of a pension with a part-time job.
This issue was raised in Parliament by head of economics for the party Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD), Álvaro Anchuelo, and the current reigning PP government confessed this was indeed the case.
But it insisted that the same calculation methods have been used since 2009, and are in accordance with the Eurostat Good Practice Code.
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