The reality that the government does not want to see

The unemployment figures, which came out on Thursday, have created tremendous enthusiasm in the government and huge disappointment in the opposition. Even if the decline of 3 million unemployed and the growth of over 20 million jobs praised by the government is true, much remains to be done. Spain still has unemployment twice the EU average. Clearly something is not being done right.

Yolanda Diaz’s correction doesn’t work, As José Luis Fernández, director of the study cabinet of the Union Syndical Obrera (USO), recently pointed out, two-thirds of the 730,000 indefinite contracts in May are part-time. The unemployment figures do not include the 425,430 unemployed in training or with limited availability, and in addition the duration of contracts fell from 60 days in April to 40 in May. The new terminology is confusing, because previously temporary contracts are now closed, and indefinite ones with that name grow in a way that is as surprising as it is artificial: in the accumulated figure for the year we would have more than 1,609,256 for the year 2019. In; It seems to have grown a lot, but that’s only because of the name change. On the other hand, discontinuous permanent workers are not counted as unemployed when they are not working but not employed as others. The number of unemployed will not increase, although in reality they will be unemployed at that time. There can be at least 1.25 lakh people in such a situation.

Perhaps more time is needed for improvement, but at this time the actual unemployment figures are higher than what has been said, and remain a significant temporary problem. Even if the figures were accurate, they would not have had to ring the bells. They are far from the average of the European Union and the average of Spain at the beginning of democracy.

Since the truth stings and the government doesn’t want to see it, the solution is infamous independent institution Say the opposite of what you want to hear. Nadia Calvino did it with the National Institute of Statistics (INE) when their growth forecast or CPI data contradicted it, and now Yolanda Díaz and José Luis Escriva do it with the Bank of Spain when they talk about how the market works. Dislike what they say or pension.

The desire for control and the conviction that the state makes better decisions on money than individuals are ignoring warnings to the government through serious institutions such as the Bank of Spain and eminent economists. Among those caveats and recommendations is that it is not possible to link pension growth with the CPI to such high inflation because public spending is skyrocketing and so is debt; that salaries should not be increased, not even that of government employees, so that inflation does not persist; Austrian rucksacks should be introduced to eliminate compensation costs for companies, facilitate labor mobility and supplement workers’ pensions; that taxes should be reduced as is done in other countries so that families and companies can breathe, consume, create jobs; That it is necessary to reduce the remaining political expenditure.

Criticisms and proposals abound, but the government ignores none of them and states that everything is going very well. optimism comes first One for Spain, which according to Nadia Calvino, was going to pick up cruising momentum with European funds this year in 2022. The General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) revealed last Wednesday that between January and March the government only paid for this chapter of 682.8 million euros out of a total of 26,900 million planned for this year. He has paid 2.5% of the total. Right now we don’t see the money that was going to replace Spain anywhere.