The fall in unemployment does not have to be good news.
In November there were records of occupation in the Spanish State: There are 61,768 Social Security workers, the highest figure in the historical series, and unemployment drops to pre-pandemic figures (3,182,687 people). Almost 2 years after the first Decree-Law on Extraordinary Economic Measures to Cope with COVID-19, the positive impact on the level of occupation is evident and objective. However, this picture does not show us all the faces of the working class reality in the Spanish state.
"Labour incomes have evolved in a similar way to the unemployment rate: the lower the unemployment rate, the lower the part of the worker's cake"
Since 2013, when unemployment reached its peak in the state (26.66%), job creation has been constant until the third quarter of 2019, when the unemployment rate was 12.23%. However, people who joined the labour market did so in another situation, especially women. Two labour reforms shaped the new labour market: job creation has concentrated on worse paid jobs, with temporary contracts, high underemployment and very economic dismissal. This process of internal devaluation has influenced the distribution of income between workers and owners of capital. With the data from the national accounts, we can see that labour incomes have evolved in terms of the unemployment rate: the more unemployment falls, the lower the part of the staff's cake. And the other side of the coin: capital acquires more and more of the total produced.
The fall in unemployment does not cause direct losses to workers, it would not be appropriate to establish a direct causal relationship between these two variables. In fact, the growth in unemployment coincides with the increase in labour incomes, but not with the increase in wages, but with the very rapid fall in corporate profits at the beginning of the crisis, and as a result of this decline in profits, companies make redundancies. As the economy improves, capital is again enriched. The pie is growing because the economy is growing, but the part of the pie of the increasingly precarious workers is proportionally smaller, even if they are the only real producers of the pie.
The growth of unemployment will always be bad news for the working class. But the growth of the occupation, within Spanish capitalism, does not have to be good news.
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