The government has admitted finally that yes, when they talk about people in employment, they’re actually talking bollocks – they mean employment contracts and so anyone with two jobs is being counted twice.
The admission came after a tabled question in Congress by the UPyD party asking for clarification.
What this means is that when the government talks about there being 16,950,000 people working in Spain, they actually mean there are 16,950,000 active work contracts under the general labour scheme.
It’s a not so subtle difference. How many of those people actually have two or more part time jobs? Nobody knows, there are no official stats. Which is why Eurostat (the EU) says countries aren’t supposed to do it this way, as the only reason for doing it is to pull the wool over the eyes of the populace.
It actually gets worse. Unemployment dropped by about 1% in the first quarter of this year. Employed people (sorry! work contracts active!) dropped by 0.5%. So… fewer unemployed, yet fewer employed. Where are those people? Mainly, fled Spain for abroad.
The government sniffed that they’ve always done it this way – at least since 2009 – and have no plans to change it.